“Two days more!  One day more,” she said.  “After the first representation at the Varietes, we will leave, are you willing?”

“Ah! you Parisienne!  Hungry Parisienne!” Jose replied.

She looked at him with her gray eyes sparkling, and smiling.

“The Varietes?—­Don’t you know the old rondel?—­The one you hummed when you were sick, you know?—­It seems to me that I can hear it yet: 

    Do you see yonder
    That white house,
    Where every Sunday
    Under the sweet lilacs—­”

Uncle Kayser, ever prudent, advised a speedy departure.  He feared he scarcely knew what.  He feared everything, “like Abner, and feared only that.”  Every morning he dreaded seeing some indiscreet articles in the papers respecting the Duke and the Duchesse de Rosas.

“These journalists disregard, without scruple, the wall of private life!  It is a moral wall, however!”

At last, they would leave in two days, so it was determined.  Rosas had wished to see Guy again for the last time.  At Rue d’Aumale they informed him that Monsieur de Lissac was travelling.  The shutters of the apartment were not, however, closed.  The duke had for a moment been tempted to insist on entering; then he withdrew and returned home without analyzing too closely the feeling of annoyance that came over him.  The weather was splendid and dry.  He returned on foot to Avenue Montaigne, where he expected to find Marianne superintending her trunks.

On entering the house, the doors of which were open, as at the hour of packing and removing, giving the whole house the appearance of neglect and flight, he was astonished to hear a man’s voice, which was neither that of Simon Kayser nor that of the valet, and evidently answering in a violent tone the equally evident angry voice of Marianne.

He did not know this voice, and the noise of a bell-rope hastily pulled, in a fit of manifest anger, made him quicken his steps, as if he instinctively felt that the duchess was in danger.

In the shadow of a dull December evening, the house, with its disordered appearance that resembled a sacking, assumed a sinister aspect.  Jose suddenly felt a sentiment of anguish.

He quickly reached the salon, where Marianne was in a robe de chambre of black satin, and was standing near the chimney with an expression of anger in her eyes, holding the bell-rope, whose iron chain had struck against the wall.

Before her stood a young man with a heavy moustache, his hat tilted over his ear, whom Monsieur de Rosas did not know.

His manner was insolent and he looked thick-set in his black, close-buttoned frock-coat.  His style was vulgar, and, with his hands in his pockets, he appeared both low and threatening.

Marianne rang for a servant.  She was flushed with rage.  She became livid on seeing Jose.

“What is the matter, then?” asked Rosas coldly, as he stepped between the duchess and the man.