ahead he felt no anxiety.  Like gamblers he counted on chance.  Besides, he still had some farms in Dauphiny.  In short, a word to his notary and he could speedily get out of danger.  Then, too, the date of payment was far away.  He calculated that by economy as to his personal income and his official salary he could meet the bill to Gochard, whose very name sometimes made him laugh.  But Marianne’s exactions, unforeseen outlays, the eternal leakage of Parisian life had quite prevented saving, and had dissipated in a thousand little streams the money that he wished to pay out in a lump in December.  He soon grew alarmed by degrees at the approach of the maturity of the debt.  He had written to his notary at Grenoble, and this old friend had replied that the farms of Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, mortgaged and cut up one after another, now represented only a ridiculous value, but that after all, Vaudrey had nothing to be concerned about, seeing that Madame Vaudrey’s fortune was intact.

Adrienne’s fortune!  That then was all that remained to Vaudrey, and that might be his salvation.  A fortune that was not very considerable, but still solid and creditable.  But even if he were strangled by debt, dunned and driven into a corner, could he pay the debts he had contracted for his mistress by means of his wife’s fortune?  He was disgusted at the thought.  It was impossible.

Vaudrey felt his head turn under the humiliation of his double defeat, the loss of parliamentary confidence, and Marianne’s insulting laugh, and urged by the anxiety he felt about the obligation to be met in eight days, in his bewilderment he thought of writing to Gochard of Rue des Marais, to ask for time.  This Gochard must be a half-usurer.  Certain of being paid, some day, he would perhaps be delighted to renew the bill of exchange in inordinately swelling the amount.  The letter was written and Vaudrey mailed it himself the following morning.

That very evening Adrienne was to leave.  He endeavored to dissuade her from her plan.  She did not even reply to him.  She stood looking at a crystal vase on the chimney-piece in which were some winter roses, Christmas roses, fresh and milk-white, that had been sent as a souvenir from yonder Dauphiny.  Her glance rested fixedly on that fair bouquet that seemed like a bursting cloud of whiteness.

“Then,” said Vaudrey, “it is settled—­quite settled—­you are going?”

“I am.”

“In three hours?”

“In three hours!”

“I know where those roses were gathered,” said Sulpice tenderly.  “It was at the foot of the window where we leaned elbow to elbow and dreamed.”

“Yes,” Adrienne answered, in a broken voice whose sound was like that which might have been given out by the vase had it been struck and shattered.  “We had lovely dreams!  The reality has indeed belied them!”

“Adrienne!” he murmured.

She made no reply.

He tried to approach her, feeling ashamed as he thought that he had similarly wished to approach Marianne.