“I’ll find you some one to ‘intriguer,’” he said.

“Ah!  I wish you would,” she replied.

“To do the thing well, a woman ought to fasten upon some good prey, a celebrity, a man of enough wit to give and take.  There’s Nathan; will you have him?  I know, through a friend of Florine, certain secrets of his which would drive him crazy.”

“Florine?” said the countess.  “Do you mean the actress?”

Marie had already heard that name from the lips of the watchman Quillet; it now shot like a flash of lightning through her soul.

“Yes, his mistress,” replied the count.  “What is there so surprising in that?”

“I thought Monsieur Nathan too busy to have a mistress.  Do authors have time to make love?”

“I don’t say they love, my dear, but they are forced to lodge somewhere, like other men, and when they haven’t a home of their own they lodge with their mistresses; which may seem to you rather loose, but it is far more agreeable than lodging in a prison.”

Fire was less red than Marie’s cheeks.

“Will you have him for a victim?  I can help you to terrify him,” continued the count, not looking at his wife’s face.  “I’ll put you in the way of proving to him that he is being tricked like a child by your brother-in-law du Tillet.  That wretch is trying to put Nathan in prison so as to make him ineligible to stand against him in the electoral college.  I know, through a friend of Florine, the exact sum derived from the sale of her furniture, which she gave to Nathan to found his newspaper; I know, too, what she sent him out of her summer’s harvest in the departments and in Belgium,—­money which has really gone to the profit of du Tillet, Nucingen, and Massol.  All three of them, unknown to Nathan, have privately sold the paper to the new ministry, so sure are they of ejecting him.”

“Monsieur Nathan is incapable of accepting money from an actress.”

“You don’t know that class of people, my dear,” said the count.  “He would not deny the fact if you asked him.”

“I will certainly go to the ball,” said the countess.

“You will be very much amused,” replied Vandenesse.  “With such weapons in hand you can cut Nathan’s complacency to the quick, and you will also do him a great service.  You will put him in a fury; he’ll try to be calm, though inwardly fuming; but, all the same, you will enlighten a man of talent as to the peril in which he really stands; and you will also have the satisfaction of laming the horses of the ‘juste-milieu’ in their stalls—­ But you are not listening to me, my dear.”

“On the contrary, I am listening intently,” she said.  “I will tell you later why I feel desirous to know the truth of all this.”