s same angelic Louise d'Armilly was no
other than a certain very beautiful, very eccentric and very talented
young lady whom we all once knew as a star of Parisian fashion, and who,
the last time she was in this house, sat in the same loge where now sit
the African generals."

"Whom can you mean, Debray?" cried Beauchamp.

"A certain haughty young lady, who was to have married an Italian
Prince, but, on the night of the bridal, in the midst of the
festivities, the house being thronged with guests, and even while the
contract was receiving the signatures, the Prince was arrested as an
escaped galley-slave, and at his trial proved to be the illegitimate son
of the bride's mother and a certain high legal functionary, the
Procureur du Roi, now at Charenton, through whose burning zeal for
justice the horrible discovery transpired."

"Ha!" exclaimed Chateau-Renaud. "You cannot mean Eugenie Danglars,
daughter of the bankrupt baron, whom our unhappy friend Morcerf was once
to have wed?"

"The very same," quietly rejoined the Secretary; "but this lady cannot
be Mlle. Danglars, I say absolutely, for many sufficient reasons," he
quickly added; then, as if to turn the conversation, he hastily
remarked: "Ah! there are M. Dantes and M. Lamartine, as usual,
together."

"M. Dantes!" exclaimed the Count, in surprise, looking around.
"Impossible!"

"And yet most true," observed Beauchamp; "in the third loge from the
Minister's to the right. What a wonderful resemblance there is between
those men--the poet and the Deputy! One would suppose them brothers. The
same tall and elegant figure, the same white and capacious brow, the
same dark, blazing eye, the same raven hair, and, above all, the same
most unearthly and spiritual pallor of complexion."

"No wonder M. Dantes is pale," said the Count. "Have you not heard of
the occurrence of this evening in the Chamber? M. Dantes was in the
midst of one of his powerful harangues against the Government, when
suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he stopped--coughed violently
several times, and pressed his handkerchief to his mouth; then taking a
small vial from his vest pocket, he placed it to his lips, and
instantaneously, as if new life had entered him, proceeded more
eloquently than ever to the conclusion of his speech."

"I heard something of this," said Beauchamp.

"As he descended from the tribune his friends thronged around him,
anxious about his health. He quieted their apprehe