The word “amusing” offended Raoul, though it was used as the ground of an invitation.  Blondet took pity on him.

“My dear fellow,” he said, taking him aside into a corner, “you are behaving in society as if you were at Florine’s.  Here no one shows annoyance, or spouts long articles; they say a few words now and then, they look their calmest when most desirous of flinging others out of the window; they sneer softly, they pretend not to think of the woman they adore, and they are careful not to roll like a donkey on the high-road.  In society, my good Raoul, conventions rule love.  Either carry off Madame de Vandenesse, or show yourself a gentleman.  As it is, you are playing the lover in one of your own books.”

Nathan listened with his head lowered; he was like a lion caught in a toil.

“I’ll never set foot in this house again,” he cried.  “That papier-mache marquise sells her tea too dear.  She thinks me amusing!  I understand now why Saint-Just wanted to guillotine this whole class of people.”

“You’ll be back here to-morrow.”

Blondet was right.  Passions are as mean as they are cruel.  The next day after long hesitation between “I’ll go—­I’ll not go,” Raoul left his new partners in the midst of an important discussion and rushed to Madame d’Espard’s house in the faubourg Saint-Honore.  Beholding Rastignac’s elegant cabriolet enter the court-yard while he was paying his cab at the gate, Nathan’s vanity was stung; he resolved to have a cabriolet himself, and its accompanying tiger, too.  The carriage of the countess was in the court-yard, and the sight of it swelled Raoul’s heart with joy.  Marie was advancing under the pressure of her desires with the regularity of the hands of a clock obeying the mainspring.  He found her sitting at the corner of the fireplace in the little salon.  Instead of looking at Nathan when he was announced, she looked at his reflection in a mirror.

“Monsieur le ministre,” said Madame d’Espard, addressing Nathan, and presenting him to de Marsay by a glance, “was maintaining, when you came in, that the royalists and the republicans have a secret understanding.  You ought to know something about it; is it so?”

“If it were so,” said Raoul, “where’s the harm?  We hate the same thing; we agree as to our hatreds, we differ only in our love.  That’s the whole of it.”

“The alliance is odd enough,” said de Marsay, giving a comprehensively meaning glance at the Comtesse Felix and Nathan.

“It won’t last,” said Rastignac, thinking, perhaps, wholly of politics.

“What do you think, my dear?” asked Madame d’Espard, addressing Marie.

“I know nothing of public affairs,” replied the countess.

“But you soon will, madame,” said de Marsay, “and then you will be doubly our enemy.”

So saying he left the room with Rastignac, and Madame d’Espard accompanied them to the door of the first salon.  The lovers had the room to themselves for a few moments.  Marie held out her ungloved hand to Raoul, who took and kissed it as though he were eighteen years old.  The eyes of the countess expressed so noble a tenderness that the tears which men of nervous temperament can always find at their service came into Raoul’s eyes.