dropping your connection with society, and neglecting your occupations and your work.  I should again be strangely calumniated.  What would the world say?  That I held you in leading-strings, absorbed you, feared comparisons, and clung to my conquest knowing it to be my last!  Who will know that you are my friend, my only friend?  If you love me indeed, as you say you love me, you will make the world believe that we are purely and simply brother and sister—­ Go on with what you were saying.”

In his armor of tenderness, riveted by the knowledge of so many splendid virtues, d’Arthez obeyed this behest on the following day and went to see Madame d’Espard, who received him with charming coquetry.  The marquise took very good care not to say a single word to him about the princess, but she asked him to dinner on a coming day.

On this occasion d’Arthez found a numerous company.  The marquise had invited Rastignac, Blondet, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, Maxime de Trailles, the Marquis d’Esgrignon, the two brothers Vandenesse, du Tillet, one of the richest bankers in Paris, the Baron de Nucingen, Raoul Nathan, Lady Dudley, two very treacherous secretaries of embassies and the Chevalier d’Espard, the wiliest person in this assemblage and the chief instigator of his sister-in-law’s policy.

When dinner was well under way, Maxime de Trailles turned to d’Arthez and said smiling:—­

“You see a great deal, don’t you, of the Princesse de Cadignan?”

To this question d’Arthez responded by curtly nodding his head.  Maxime de Trailles was a “bravo” of the social order, without faith or law, capable of everything, ruining the women who trusted him, compelling them to pawn their diamonds to give him money, but covering this conduct with a brilliant varnish; a man of charming manners and satanic mind.  He inspired all who knew him with equal contempt and fear; but as no one was bold enough to show him any sentiments but those of the utmost courtesy he saw nothing of this public opinion, or else he accepted and shared the general dissimulation.  He owed to the Comte de Marsay the greatest degree of elevation to which he could attain.  De Marsay, whose knowledge of Maxime was of long-standing, judged him capable of fulfilling certain secret and diplomatic functions which he confided to him and of which de Trailles acquitted himself admirably.  D’Arthez had for some time past mingled sufficiently in political matters to know the man for what he was, and he alone had sufficient strength and height of character to express aloud what others thought or said in a whisper.

“Is it for her that you neglect the Chamber?” asked Baron de Nucingen in his German accent.

“Ah! the princess is one of the most dangerous women a man can have anything to do with.  I owe to her the miseries of my marriage,” exclaimed the Marquis d’Esgrignon.

“Dangerous?” said Madame d’Espard.  “Don’t speak so of my nearest friend.  I have never seen or known anything in the princess that did not seem to come from the noblest sentiments.”