“It is all over with me,” he cried.

“No, M. le Comte, drive as fast as you can to the Hotel du Bon la Fontaine, in the Rue de Grenelle.  Mlle. Armande is waiting there for you, the horses have been put in, she will take you with her.”

Victurnien, in his trouble, caught like a drowning man at the branch that came to his hand; he rushed off to the inn, reached the place, and flung his arms about his aunt.  Mlle. Armande cried as if her heart would break; any one might have thought that she had a share in her nephew’s guilt.  They stepped into the carriage.  A few minutes later they were on the road to Brest, and Paris lay behind them.  Victurnien uttered not a sound; he was paralyzed.  And when aunt and nephew began to speak, they talked at cross purposes; Victurnien, still laboring under the unlucky misapprehension which flung him into Mlle. Armande’s arms, was thinking of his forgery; his aunt had the debts and the bills on her mind.

“You know all, aunt,” he had said.

“Poor boy, yes, but we are here.  I am not going to scold you just yet.  Take heart.”

“I must hide somewhere.”

“Perhaps. . . .  Yes, it is a very good idea.”

“Perhaps I might get into Chesnel’s house without being seen if we timed ourselves to arrive in the middle of the night?”

“That will be best.  We shall be better able to hide this from my brother.—­Poor angel! how unhappy he is!” said she, petting the unworthy child.

“Ah! now I begin to know what dishonor means; it has chilled my love.”

“Unhappy boy; what bliss and what misery!” And Mlle. Armande drew his fevered face to her breast and kissed his forehead, cold and damp though it was, as the holy women might have kissed the brow of the dead Christ when they laid Him in His grave clothes.  Following out the excellent scheme suggested by the prodigal son, he was brought by night to the quiet house in the Rue du Bercail; but chance ordered it that by so doing he ran straight into the wolf’s jaws, as the saying goes.  That evening Chesnel had been making arrangements to sell his connection to M. Lepressoir’s head-clerk.  M. Lepressoir was the notary employed by the Liberals, just as Chesnel’s practice lay among the aristocratic families.  The young fellow’s relatives were rich enough to pay Chesnel the considerable sum of a hundred thousand francs in cash.

Chesnel was rubbing his hands.  “A hundred thousand francs will go a long way in buying up debts,” he thought.  “The young man is paying a high rate of interest on his loans.  We will lock him up down here.  I will go yonder myself and bring those curs to terms.”

Chesnel, honest Chesnel, upright, worthy Chesnel, called his darling Comte Victurnien’s creditors “curs.”

Meanwhile his successor was making his way along the Rue du Bercail just as Mlle. Armande’s traveling carriage turned into it.  Any young man might be expected to feel some curiosity if he saw a traveling carriage stop at a notary’s door in such a town and at such an hour of the night; the young man in question was sufficiently inquisitive to stand in a doorway and watch.  He saw Mlle. Armande alight.