“Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, to whom I owe much, had desired me . . .”

“Oh yes, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse is Madame de Serizy’s friend,” said Granville, interrupting him.  “To be sure.—­You have allowed nothing to influence you, I perceive.  And you did well, sir; you will be a great magistrate.”

At this instant the Comte Octave de Bauvan opened the door without knocking, and said to the Comte de Granville: 

“I have brought you a fair lady, my dear fellow, who did not know which way to turn; she was on the point of losing herself in our labyrinth——­”

And Comte Octave led in by the hand the Comtesse de Serizy, who had been wandering about the place for the last quarter of an hour.

“What, you here, madame!” exclaimed the public prosecutor, pushing forward his own armchair, “and at this moment!  This, madame, is Monsieur Camusot,” he added, introducing the judge.—­“Bauvan,” said he to the distinguished ministerial orator of the Restoration, “wait for me in the president’s chambers; he is still there, and I will join you.”

Comte Octave de Bauvan understood that not merely was he in the way, but that Monsieur de Granville wanted an excuse for leaving his room.

Madame de Serizy had not made the mistake of coming to the Palais de Justice in her handsome carriage with a blue hammer-cloth and coats-of-arms, her coachman in gold lace, and two footmen in breeches and silk stockings.  Just as they were starting Asie impressed on the two great ladies the need for taking the hackney coach in which she and the Duchess had arrived, and she had likewise insisted on Lucien’s mistress adopting the costume which is to women what a gray cloak was of yore to men.  The Countess wore a plain brown dress, an old black shawl, and a velvet bonnet from which the flowers had been removed, and the whole covered up under a thick lace veil.

“You received our note?” said she to Camusot, whose dismay she mistook for respectful admiration.

“Alas! but too late, Madame la Comtesse,” replied the lawyer, whose tact and wit failed him excepting in his chambers and in presence of a prisoner.

“Too late!  How?”

She looked at Monsieur de Granville, and saw consternation written in his face.  “It cannot be, it must not be too late!” she added, in the tone of a despot.

Women, pretty women, in the position of Madame de Serizy, are the spoiled children of French civilization.  If the women of other countries knew what a woman of fashion is in Paris, a woman of wealth and rank, they would all want to come and enjoy that splendid royalty.  The women who recognize no bonds but those of propriety, no law but the petty charter which has been more than once alluded to in this Comedie Humaine as the ladies’ Code, laugh at the statutes framed by men.  They say everything, they do not shrink from any blunder or hesitate at any folly, for they all accept the fact that they are irresponsible beings, answerable for nothing on earth but their good repute and their children.  They say the most preposterous things with a laugh, and are ready on every occasion to repeat the speech made in the early days of her married life by pretty Madame de Bauvan to her husband, whom she came to fetch away from the Palais:  “Make haste and pass sentence, and come away.”