“I have waited a week to hear from her.”

“Go and call.”

“Yes, I must now.”

“Are you coming at any rate to the Val-Noble’s?  Her nabob is returning the supper given by Nucingen.”

“I am asked, and I shall go,” said Lucien gravely.

The day after this confirmation of his disaster, which Carlos heard of at once from Asie, Lucien went to the Rue Taitbout with Rastignac and Nucingen.

At midnight nearly all the personages of this drama were assembled in the dining-room that had formerly been Esther’s—­a drama of which the interest lay hidden under the very bed of these tumultuous lives, and was known only to Esther, to Lucien, to Peyrade, to Contenson, the mulatto, and to Paccard, who attended his mistress.  Asie, without its being known to Contenson and Peyrade, had been asked by Madame du Val-Noble to come and help her cook.

As they sat down to table, Peyrade, who had given Madame du Val-Noble five hundred francs that the thing might be well done, found under his napkin a scrap of paper on which these words were written in pencil, “The ten days are up at the moment when you sit down to supper.”

Peyrade handed the paper to Contenson, who was standing behind him, saying in English: 

“Did you put my name here?”

Contenson read by the light of the wax-candles this “Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,” and slipped the scrap into his pocket; but he knew how difficult it is to verify a handwriting in pencil, and, above all, a sentence written in Roman capitals, that is to say, with mathematical lines, since capital letters are wholly made up of straight lines and curves, in which it is impossible to detect any trick of the hand, as in what is called running-hand.

The supper was absolutely devoid of spirit.  Peyrade was visibly absent-minded.  Of the men about town who give life to a supper, only Rastignac and Lucien were present.  Lucien was gloomy and absorbed in thought; Rastignac, who had lost two thousand francs before supper, ate and drank with the hope of recovering them later.  The three women, stricken by this chill, looked at each other.  Dulness deprived the dishes of all relish.  Suppers, like plays and books, have their good and bad luck.

At the end of the meal ices were served, of the kind called plombieres.  As everybody knows, this kind of dessert has delicate preserved fruits laid on the top of the ice, which is served in a little glass, not heaped above the rim.  These ices had been ordered by Madame du Val-Noble of Tortoni, whose shop is at the corner of the Rue Taitbout and the Boulevard.

The cook called Contenson out of the room to pay the bill.

Contenson, who thought this demand on the part of the shop-boy rather strange, went downstairs and startled him by saying: 

“Then you have not come from Tortoni’s?” and then went straight upstairs again.

Paccard had meanwhile handed the ices to the company in his absence.  The mulatto had hardly reached the door when one of the police constables who had kept watch in the Rue des Moineaux called up the stairs: