She hesitated, considered, compared; then, her decision made, started off with the resolved air of a woman tearing herself regretfully from the temptations of the window.  As she moved away, the Marquis de Monpavon, proud and well-dressed, a flower in his coat, saluted her at a distance with that sweep of the hat so dear to women’s vanity, the well-bred brow, with the hat lifted high above the erect head.  She answered him with her pretty Parisian’s greeting, expressed in an imperceptible inclination of the body and a smile; and seeing this exchange of politeness in the midst of the spring gaiety, one would never think that the same sinister idea was guiding the two, meeting by chance on the road they were traversing in opposite directions, but to the same end.

The prediction of Mora’s valet had come true for the marquis:  “We may die or lose power; then there will be a reckoning, and it will be terrible.”  It was terrible.  The former receiver-general had obtained with difficulty a delay of a fortnight to make up his deficiencies, taking the last chance that Jansoulet, with his election confirmed, and with full control over his millions again, would come to the rescue once more.  The decision of the Assembly had just taken from him this last hope.  As soon as he knew it, he returned to the club calmly, and went up to his room, where Francis was waiting impatiently for him with an important paper just arrived.  It was a notification to the Sieur Louis-Marie-Agenor de Monpavon to appear the next day in the office of the Juge d’Instruction.  Was it addressed to the censor of the Territorial Bank or to the former receiver-general?  In any case, the bold formula of a judicial assignation in the first instance, instead of a private invitation, spoke sufficiently of the gravity of the situation and the firm resolution of Justice.

In view of such an extremity, foreseen and expected for long, he had made his plans.  A Monpavon in the criminal courts!—­a Monpavon, librarian in a convict prison!  Never!  He put all his affairs in order, tore up his papers, emptied his pockets carefully, and took something from his toilet-table, so calmly and naturally, that when he said to Francis, as he was going out, “Am going to the baths—­That dirty Chamber—­Filthy dust”—­the servant took him at his word.  And the marquis was not lying.  His exciting post up there in the dust of the tribune had tired him as much as two nights in the train; and his decision to die associated itself with his desire to take a bath, the old Sybarite thought of going to sleep in the bath, like what’s his name, and other famous personages of antiquity.  And in justice, it must be said that not one of these Stoics went to his death more quietly than he.