The voice of prudence cried out to him:  “Unhappy man! to drag a woman along with you, and a pretty woman too, is but to stupidly attract attention upon you, to render flight impossible, to give yourself up like a fool.”

“What of that?” replied passion.  “We will be saved or we will perish together.  If she does not love me, I love her; I must have her!  She will come, otherwise—­”

But how to see Juliette, to speak with her, to persuade her.  To go to her house, was a great risk for him to run.  The police were perhaps there already.

“No,” thought Noel; “no one knows that she is my mistress.  It will not be found out for two or three days and, besides, it would be more dangerous still to write.”

He took a cab not far from the Carrefour de l’Observatoire, and in a low tone told the driver the number of the house in the Rue de Provence, which had proved so fatal to him.  Stretched on the cushions of the cab, lulled by its monotonous jolts, Noel gave no thought to the future, he did not even think over what he should say to Juliette.  No.  He passed involuntarily in review the events which had brought on and hastened the catastrophe, like a man on the point of death, reviews the tragedy or the comedy of his life.

Just one month before, ruined, at the end of his expedients and absolutely without resources, he had determined, cost what it might, to procure money, so as to be able to continue to keep Madame Juliette, when chance placed in his hands Count de Commarin’s correspondence.  Not only the letters read to old Tabaret, and shown to Albert, but also those, which, written by the count when he believed the substitution an accomplished fact, plainly established it.

The reading of these gave him an hour of mad delight.

He believed himself the legitimate son; but his mother soon undeceived him, told him the truth, proved to him by several letters she had received from Widow Lerouge, called on Claudine to bear witness to it, and demonstrated it to him by the scar he bore.

But a falling man never selects the branch he tries to save himself by.  Noel resolved to make use of the letters all the same.

He attempted to induce his mother to leave the count in his ignorance, so that he might thus blackmail him.  But Madame Gerdy spurned the proposition with horror.

Then the advocate made a confession of all his follies, laid bare his financial condition, showed himself in his true light, sunk in debt; and he finally begged his mother to have recourse to M. de Commarin.

This also she refused, and prayers and threats availed nothing against her resolution.  For a fortnight, there was a terrible struggle between mother and son, in which the advocate was conquered.

It was then that the idea of murdering Claudine occurred to him.

The unhappy woman had not been more frank with Madame Gerdy than with others, so that Noel really thought her a widow.  Therefore, her testimony suppressed, who else stood in his way?