and, as soon as the door had closed behind him,

"Well?" exclaimed M. Desormeaux;

But no one had any thing to say. The guests of that house where
misfortune had just entered were making haste to leave. The
catastrophe was certainly terrible and unforeseen; but did it not
reach them too? Did they not lose among them more than three hundred
thousand francs?

Thus, after a few commonplace protestations, and some of those
promises which mean nothing, they withdrew; and, as they were going
down the stairs,

"The commissary took Vincent's escape too easy," remarked M.
Desormeaux. "He must know some way to catch him again."

VI

At last Mme. Favoral found herself alone with her children and free
to give herself up to the most frightful despair.

She dropped heavily upon a seat; and, drawing to her bosom Maxence
and Gilberte,

"O my children!" she sobbed, covering them with her kisses and her
tears,--"my children, we are most unfortunate."

Not less distressed than herself, they strove, nevertheless, to
mitigate her anguish, to inspire her with sufficient courage to bear
this crushing trial; and kneeling at her feet, and kissing her hands,

"Are we not with you still, mother?" they kept repeating.

But she seemed not to hear them.

"It is not for myself that I weep," she went on. "I! what had I
still to wait or hope for in life? Whilst you, Maxence, you, my
poor Gilberte!--If, at least, I could feel myself free from blame!
But no. It is my weakness and my want of courage that have brought
on this catastrophe. I shrank from the struggle. I purchased my
domestic peace at the cost of your future in the world. I forgot
that a mother has sacred duties towards her children."

Mme. Favoral was at this time a woman of some forty-three years,
with delicate and mild features, a countenance overflowing with
kindness, and whose whole being exhaled, as it were, an exquisite
perfume of _noblesse_ and distinction.

Happy, she might have been beautiful still,--of that autumnal
beauty whose maturity has the splendors of the luscious fruits of
the later season.

But she had suffered so much! The livid paleness of her complexion,
the rigid fold of her lips, the nervous shudders that shook her
frame, revealed a whole existence of bitter deceptions, of exhausting
struggles, and of proudly concealed humiliations.

And yet every thing seemed to smile upon her at the outset of life.

She was an only daughter; an