Whereupon Madame, like a drowning man, or rather woman, catching at a straw, bethought her of her emeralds.  They were historic gems, once the property of the Empress Marie-Therese, and had been given to her on her second marriage by her adoring father.  No, no! she would never miss them; she seldom wore them, for they were heavy and more valuable than elegant, and she was quite sure that at the Mont de Piete they would lend her five hundred thousand francs on them.  Then gradually they could be redeemed before papa had become aware of their temporary disappearance.  Madame would save the money out of the liberal allowance she received from him for pin-money.  Anything, anything was preferable to this awful doom which hung over her head.

But even so M. le Marquis demurred.  The thought of his proud and fashionable Rachel going to the Mont de Piete to pawn her own jewels was not to be thought of.  She would be seen, recognized, and the scandal would be as bad and worse than anything that loomed on the black horizon of her fate at this hour.

What was to be done?  What was to be done?

Then M. le Marquis had a brilliant idea.  He knew of a man, a very reliable, trustworthy man, attorney-at-law by profession, and therefore a man of repute, who was often obliged in the exercise of his profession to don various disguises when tracking criminals in the outlying quarters of Paris.  M. le Marquis, putting all pride and dignity nobly aside in the interests of his adored Rachel, would borrow one of these disguises and himself go to the Mont de Piete with the emeralds, obtain the five hundred thousand francs, and remit them to the man whom he hated most in all the world, in exchange for the aforementioned guarantee.

Madame la Marquise, overcome with gratitude, threw herself, in the midst of a flood of tears, into the arms of the man whom she no longer dared to call her husband, and so the matter was settled for the moment.  M. le Marquis undertook to have the deed of guarantee drafted by the same notary of repute whom he knew, and, if Madame approved of it, the emeralds would then be converted into money, and the interview with M. le Comte de Naquet fixed for Wednesday, October 10th, at some convenient place, subsequently to be determined on—­in all probability at the bureau of that same ubiquitous attorney-at-law, M. Hector Ratichon, at 96 Rue Daunon.

All was going on excellently well, as you observe.  I duly drafted the deed, and M. de Firmin-Latour showed it to Madame for her approval.  It was so simply and so comprehensively worded that she expressed herself thoroughly satisfied with it, whereupon M. le Marquis asked her to write to her shameful persecutor in order to fix the date and hour for the exchange of the money against the deed duly signed and witnessed.  M. le Marquis had always been the intermediary for her letters, you understand, and for the small sums of money which she had sent from time to time to the factitious M. de Naquet; now he was to be entrusted with the final negotiations which, though at a heavy cost, would bring security and happiness once more in the sumptuous palace of the Rue de Grammont.