This scene of scalding tears shed on the Baron’s head, and of ice-cold feet that he tried to warm, lasted from midnight till two in the morning.

“Eugenie,” cried the Baron at last to Europe, “persvade your mis’ess that she shall go to bet.”

“No!” cried Esther, starting to her feet like a scared horse.  “Never in this house!”

“Look her, monsieur, I know madame; she is as gentle and kind as a lamb,” said Europe to the Baron.  “Only you must not rub her the wrong way, you must get at her sideways—­she had been so miserable here.  —­You see how worn the furniture is.—­Let her go her own way.

“Furnish some pretty little house for her, very nicely.  Perhaps when she sees everything new about her she will feel a stranger there, and think you better looking than you are, and be angelically sweet.—­Oh! madame has not her match, and you may boast of having done a very good stroke of business:  a good heart, genteel manners, a fine instep—­and a skin, a complexion!  Ah!——­

“And witty enough to make a condemned wretch laugh.  And madame can feel an attachment.—­And then how she can dress!—­Well, if it is costly, still, as they say, you get your money’s worth.—­Here all the gowns were seized, everything she has is three months old.—­But madame is so kind, you see, that I love her, and she is my mistress!—­But in all justice—­such a woman as she is, in the midst of furniture that has been seized!—­And for whom?  For a young scamp who has ruined her.  Poor little thing, she is not at all herself.”

“Esther, Esther; go to bet, my anchel!  If it is me vat frighten you, I shall stay here on dis sofa——­” cried the Baron, fired by the purest devotion, as he saw that Esther was still weeping.

“Well, then,” said Esther, taking the “lynx’s” hand, and kissing it with an impulse of gratitude which brought something very like a tear to his eye, “I shall be grateful to you——­”

And she fled into her room and locked the door.

“Dere is someting fery strange in all dat,” thought Nucingen, excited by his pillules.  “Vat shall dey say at home?”

He got up and looked out of the window.  “My carriage still is dere.  It shall soon be daylight.”  He walked up and down the room.

“Vat Montame de Nucingen should laugh at me ven she should know how I hafe spent dis night!”

He applied his ear to the bedroom door, thinking himself rather too much of a simpleton.

“Esther!”

No reply.

“Mein Gott! and she is still veeping!” said he to himself, as he stretched himself on the sofa.

About ten minutes after sunrise, the Baron de Nucingen, who was sleeping the uneasy slumbers that are snatched by compulsion in an awkward position on a couch, was aroused with a start by Europe from one of those dreams that visit us in such moments, and of which the swift complications are a phenomenon inexplicable by medical physiology.