The great news was discussed that evening in every drawing-room; little shopkeepers, working folk, beggars, the noblesse, the merchant class—­the whole town, in short, was talking of the Comte d’Esgrignon’s arrest on a charge of forgery.  The Comte d’Esgrignon would be tried in the Assize Court; he would be condemned and branded.  Most of those who cared for the honor of the family denied the fact.  At nightfall Chesnel went to Mme. Camusot and escorted the stranger to the Hotel d’Esgrignon.  Poor Mlle. Armande was expecting him; she led the fair Duchess to her own room, which she had given up to her, for his lordship the Bishop occupied Victurnien’s chamber; and, left alone with her guest, the noble woman glanced at the Duchess with most piteous eyes.

“You owed help, indeed, madame, to the poor boy who ruined himself for your sake,” she said, “the boy to whom we are all of us sacrificing ourselves.”

The Duchess had already made a woman’s survey of Mlle. d’Esgrignon’s room; the cold, bare, comfortless chamber, that might have been a nun’s cell, was like a picture of the life of the heroic woman before her.  The Duchess saw it all—­past, present, and future—­with rising emotion, felt the incongruity of her presence, and could not keep back the falling tears that made answer for her.

But in Mlle. Armande the Christian overcame Victurnien’s aunt.  “Ah, I was wrong; forgive me, Mme. la Duchesse; you did not know how poor we were, and my nephew was incapable of the admission.  And besides, now that I see you, I can understand all—­even the crime!”

And Mlle. Armande, withered and thin and white, but beautiful as those tall austere slender figures which German art alone can paint, had tears too in her eyes.

“Do not fear, dear angel,” the Duchess said at last; “he is safe.”

“Yes, but honor?—­and his career?  Chesnel told me; the King knows the truth.”

“We will think of a way of repairing the evil,” said the Duchess.

Mlle. Armande went downstairs to the salon, and found the Collection of Antiquities complete to a man.  Every one of them had come, partly to do honor to the Bishop, partly to rally round the Marquis; but Chesnel, posted in the antechamber, warned each new arrival to say no word of the affair, that the aged Marquis might never know that such a thing had been.  The loyal Frank was quite capable of killing his son or du Croisier; for either the one or the other must have been guilty of death in his eyes.  It chanced, strangely enough, that he talked more of Victurnien than usual; he was glad that his son had gone back to Paris.  The King would give Victurnien a place before very long; the King was interesting himself at last in the d’Esgrignons.  And his friends, their hearts dead within them, praised Victurnien’s conduct to the skies.  Mlle. Armande prepared the way for her nephew’s sudden appearance among them by remarking to her brother that Victurnien would be sure to come to see them, and that he must be even then on his way.