“And must I see that?” said the countess, frightened.

“To-morrow night.”

The next evening, about midnight, Nathan was walking about the foyer of the Opera with a mask on his arm, to whom he was attending in a sufficiently conjugal manner.  Presently two masked women came up to him.

“You poor fool!  Marie is here and is watching you,” said one of them, who was Vandenesse, disguised as a woman.

“If you choose to listen to me I will tell you secrets that Nathan is hiding from you,” said the other woman, who was the countess, to Florine.

Nathan had abruptly dropped Florine’s arm to follow the count, who adroitly slipped into the crowd and was out of sight in a moment.  Florine followed the countess, who sat down on a seat close at hand, to which the count, doubling on Nathan, returned almost immediately to guard his wife.

“Explain yourself, my dear,” said Florine, “and don’t think I shall stand this long.  No one can tear Raoul from me, I’ll tell you that; I hold him by habit, and that’s even stronger than love.”

“In the first place, are you Florine?” said the count, speaking in his natural voice.

“A pretty question! if you don’t know that, my joking friend, why should I believe you?”

“Go and ask Nathan, who has left you to look for his other mistress, where he passed the night, three days ago.  He tried to kill himself without a word to you, my dear,—­and all for want of money.  That shows how much you know about the affairs of a man whom you say you love, and who leaves you without a penny, and kills himself,—­or, rather, doesn’t kill himself, for his misses it.  Suicides that don’t kill are about as absurd as a duel without a scratch.”

“That’s a lie,” said Florine.  “He dined with me that very day.  The poor fellow had the sheriff after him; he was hiding, as well he might.”

“Go and ask at the hotel du Mail, rue du Mail, if he was not taken there that morning, half dead of the fumes of charcoal, by a handsome young woman with whom he has been in love over a year.  Her letters are at this moment under your very nose in your own house.  If you want to teach Nathan a good lesson, let us all three go there; and I’ll show you, papers in hand, how you can save him from the sheriff and Clichy if you choose to be the good girl that you are.”

“Try that on others than Florine, my little man.  I am certain that Nathan has never been in love with any one but me.”

“On the contrary, he has been in love with a woman in society for over a year—­”

“A woman in society, he!” cried Florine.  “I don’t trouble myself about such nonsense as that.”

“Well, do you want me to make him come and tell you that he will not take you home from here to-night.”

“If you can make him tell me that,” said Florine, “I’ll take you home, and we’ll look for those letters, which I shall believe in when I see them, and not till then.  He must have written them while I slept.”