“You shall know it,” said Vandenesse.  “If you stay masked I will take you to supper with Nathan and Florine; it would be rather amusing for a woman of your rank to fool an actress after bewildering the wits of a clever man about these important facts; you can harness them both to the same hoax.  I’ll make some inquiries about Nathan’s infidelities, and if I discover any of his recent adventures you shall enjoy the sight of a courtesan’s fury; it is magnificent.  Florine will boil and foam like an Alpine torrent; she adores Nathan; he is everything to her; she clings to him like flesh to the bones or a lioness to her cubs.  I remember seeing, in my youth, a celebrated actress (who wrote like a scullion) when she came to a friend of mine to demand her letters.  I have never seen such a sight again, such calm fury, such insolent majesty, such savage self-control—­ Are you ill, Marie?”

“No; they have made too much fire.”  The countess turned away and threw herself on a sofa.  Suddenly, with an unforeseen movement, impelled by the horrible anguish of her jealousy, she rose on her trembling legs, crossed her arms, and came slowly to her husband.

“What do you know?” she asked.  “You are not a man to torture me; you would crush me without making me suffer if I were guilty.”

“What do you expect me to know, Marie?”

“Well! about Nathan.”

“You think you love him,” he replied; “but you love a phantom made of words.”

“Then you know—­”

“All,” he said.

The word fell on Marie’s head like the blow of a club.

“If you wish it, I will know nothing,” he continued.  “You are standing on the brink of a precipice, my child, and I must draw you from it.  I have already done something.  See!”

He drew from his pocket her letter of guarantee and the four notes endorsed by Schmucke, and let the countess recognize them; then he threw them into the fire.

“What would have happened to you, my poor Marie, three months hence?” he said.  “The sheriffs would have taken you to a public court-room.  Don’t bow your head, don’t feel humiliated; you have been the dupe of noble feelings; you have coquetted with poesy, not with a man.  All women—­all, do you hear me, Marie?—­would have been seduced in your position.  How absurd we should be, we men, we who have committed a thousand follies through a score of years, if we were not willing to grant you one imprudence in a lifetime!  God keep me from triumphing over you or from offering you a pity you repelled so vehemently the other day.  Perhaps that unfortunate man was sincere when he wrote to you, sincere in attempting to kill himself, sincere in returning that same night to Florine.  Men are worth less than women.  It is not for my own sake that I speak at this moment, but for yours.  I am indulgent, but the world is not; it shuns a woman who makes a scandal.  Is that just?  I know not; but this I know, the world is cruel.  Society