“You are very kind, madame.—­Well, you know that Camusot’s way of examining Lucien de Rubempre drove the young man to despair, and he hanged himself in prison.”

“Oh, what will become of Madame de Serizy?” cried the Marquise, affecting ignorance, that she might hear the whole story once more.

“Alas! they say she is quite mad,” said Amelie.  “If you could persuade the Lord Keeper to send for my husband this minute, by special messenger, to meet him at the Palais, the Minister would hear some strange mysteries, and report them, no doubt, to the King. . . .  Then Camusot’s enemies would be reduced to silence.”

“But who are Camusot’s enemies?” asked Madame d’Espard.

“The public prosecutor, and now Monsieur de Serizy.”

“Very good, my dear,” replied Madame d’Espard, who owed to Monsieur de Granville and the Comte de Serizy her defeat in the disgraceful proceedings by which she had tried to have her husband treated as a lunatic, “I will protect you; I never forget either my foes or my friends.”

She rang; the maid drew open the curtains, and daylight flooded the room; she asked for her desk, and the maid brought it in.  The Marquise hastily scrawled a few lines.

“Tell Godard to go on horseback, and carry this note to the Chancellor’s office.—­There is no reply,” said she to the maid.

The woman went out of the room quickly, but, in spite of the order, remained at the door for some minutes.

“There are great mysteries going forward then?” asked Madame d’Espard.  “Tell me all about it, dear child.  Has Clotilde de Grandlieu put a finger in the pie?”

“You will know everything from the Lord Keeper, for my husband has told me nothing.  He only told me he was in danger.  It would be better for us that Madame de Serizy should die than that she should remain mad.”

“Poor woman!” said the Marquise.  “But was she not mad already?”

Women of the world, by a hundred ways of pronouncing the same phrase, illustrate to attentive hearers the infinite variety of musical modes.  The soul goes out into the voice as it does into the eyes; it vibrates in light and in air—­the elements acted on by the eyes and the voice.  By the tone she gave to the two words, “Poor woman!” the Marquise betrayed the joy of satisfied hatred, the pleasure of triumph.  Oh! what woes did she not wish to befall Lucien’s protectress.  Revenge, which nothing can assuage, which can survive the person hated, fills us with dark terrors.  And Madame Camusot, though harsh herself, vindictive, and quarrelsome, was overwhelmed.  She could find nothing to say, and was silent.