“Mlle. Armande d’Esgrignon at this time of night!” said he to himself.  “What can be going forward at the d’Esgrignons’?”

At the sight of mademoiselle, Chesnel opened the door circumspectly and set down the light which he was carrying; but when he looked out and saw Victurnien, Mlle. Armande’s first whispered word made the whole thing plain to him.  He looked up and down the street; it seemed quite deserted; he beckoned, and the young Count sprang out of the carriage and entered the courtyard.  All was lost.  Chesnel’s successor had discovered Victurnien’s hiding place.

Victurnien was hurried into the house and installed in a room beyond Chesnel’s private office.  No one could enter it except across the old man’s dead body.

“Ah!  M. le Comte!” exclaimed Chesnel, notary no longer.

“Yes, monsieur,” the Count answered, understanding his old friend’s exclamation.  “I did not listen to you; and now I have fallen into the depths, and I must perish.”

“No, no,” the good man answered, looking triumphantly from Mlle. Armande to the Count.  “I have sold my connection.  I have been working for a very long time now, and am thinking of retiring.  By noon to-morrow I shall have a hundred thousand francs; many things can be settled with that.  Mademoiselle, you are tired,” he added; “go back to the carriage and go home and sleep.  Business to-morrow.”

“Is he safe?” returned she, looking at Victurnien.

“Yes.”

She kissed her nephew; a few tears fell on his forehead.  Then she went.

“My good Chesnel,” said the Count, when they began to talk of business, “what are your hundred thousand francs in such a position as mine?  You do not know the full extent of my troubles, I think.”

Victurnien explained the situation.  Chesnel was thunderstruck.  But for the strength of his devotion, he would have succumbed to this blow.  Tears streamed from the eyes that might well have had no tears left to shed.  For a few moments he was a child again, for a few moments he was bereft of his senses; he stood like a man who should find his own house on fire, and through a window see the cradle ablaze and hear the hiss of the flames on his children’s curls.  He rose to his full height —­il se dressa en pied, as Amyot would have said; he seemed to grow taller; he raised his withered hands and wrung them despairingly and wildly.

“If only your father may die and never know this, young man!  To be a forger is enough; a parricide you must not be.  Fly, you say?  No.  They would condemn you for contempt of court!  Oh, wretched boy!  Why did you not forge my signature? I would have paid; I should not have taken the bill to the public prosecutor.—­Now I can do nothing.  You have brought me to a stand in the lowest pit in hell!—­Du Croisier!  What will come of it?  What is to be done?—­If you had killed a man, there might be some help for it.  But forgery—­forgery!  And time—­the time is flying,” he went on, shaking his fist towards the old clock.  “You will want a sham passport now.  One crime leads to another.  First,” he added, after a pause, “first of all we must save the house of d’Esgrignon.”