departure.  At these revelations, Adrienne felt her affection and tender pity for the poor sempstress greatly increase.  By her command, the most active steps were taken to discover traces of the hunchback; but Florine’s confession had a still more important result.  Justly alarmed at this new evidence of Rodin’s machinations, Adrienne remembered the projects formed, when, believing herself beloved, the instinct of affection had revealed to her the perils to which Djalma and other members of the Rennepont family were exposed.  To assemble the race around her, and bid them rally against the common enemy, such was Adrienne’s first thought, when she heard the confession of Florine.  She regarded it as a duty to accomplish this project.  In a struggle with such dangerous and powerful adversaries as Rodin, Father d’Aigrigny, and the Princess de Saint-Dizier, and their allies, Adrienne saw not only the praiseworthy and perilous task of unmasking hypocrisy and cupidity, but also, if not a consolation, at least a generous diversion in the midst of terrible sorrows.

From this moment, a restless, feverish activity took the place of the mournful apathy in which the young lady had languished.  She called round her all the members of her family capable of answering the appeal, and, as had been mentioned in the secret note delivered to Father d’Aigrigny, Cardoville House soon became the centre of the most active and unceasing operations, and also a place of meeting, in which the modes of attack and defence were fully discussed.  Perfectly correct in all points, the secret note of which we have spoken stated, as a mere conjecture, that Mdlle. de Cardoville had granted an interview to Djalma.  This fact was untrue, but the cause which led to the supposition will be explained hereafter.  Far from such being the case, Mdlle. de Cardoville scarcely found, in attending to the great family interests now at stake, a momentary diversion from the fatal love, which was slowly undermining her health, and with which she so bitterly reproached herself.

The morning of the day on which Adrienne, at length discovering Mother Bunch’s residence, came so miraculously to rescue her from death, Agricola Baudoin had been to Cardoville House to confer on the subject of Francis Hardy, and had begged Adrienne to permit him to accompany her to the Rue Clovis, whither they repaired in haste.

Thus, once again, there was a noble spectacle, a touching symbol!  Mdlle. de Cardoville and Mother Bunch, the two extremities of the social chain, were united on equal terms—­for the sempstress and the fair patrician were equal in intelligence and heart—­and equal also, because the one was the ideal of riches, grace, and beauty, and the other the ideal of resignation and unmerited misfortune—­and does not a halo rest on misfortune borne with courage and dignity?  Stretched on her mattress, the hunchback appeared so weak, that even if Agricola had not been detained on the ground floor with Cephyse, now dying a dreadful