This advice offended Prosper’s pride, but he said nothing.  He was thinking of what the stranger had said to him.

“I will think it over,” he finally forced himself to say.  “I will see.  I would like to know what M. Fauvel says.”

“My uncle?  I suppose you know that I have declined the offer he made me to enter his banking-house, and we have almost quarrelled.  I have not set foot in his house for over a month; but I hear of him occasionally.”

“Through whom?”

“Through your friend Cavaillon.  My uncle, they say, is more distressed by this affair than you are.  He does not attend to his business, and wanders about as if he had lost every friend on earth.”

“And Mme. Fauvel, and”—­Prosper hesitated—­“and Mlle. Madeleine, how are they?”

“Oh,” said Raoul lightly, “my aunt is as pious as ever; she has mass said for the benefit of the sinner.  As to my handsome, icy cousin, she cannot bring herself down to common matters, because she is entirely absorbed in preparing for the fancy ball to be given day after to-morrow by mm.  Jandidier.  She has discovered, so one of her friends told me, a wonderful dressmaker, a stranger who has suddenly appeared from no one knows where, who is making a costume of Catherine de Medici’s maid of honor; and it is to be a marvel of beauty.”

Excessive suffering brings with it a sort of dull insensibility and stupor; and Prosper thought that there was nothing left to be inflicted upon him, and had reached that state of impassibility from which he never expected to be aroused, when this last remark of M. de Lagors made him cry out with pain: 

“Madeleine!  Oh, Madeleine!”

M. de Lagors, pretending not to have heard him, rose from his chair, and said: 

“I must leave you now, my dear Prosper; on Saturday I will see these ladies at the ball, and will bring you news of them.  Now, do have courage, and remember that, whatever happens, you have a friend in me.”

Raoul shook Prosper’s hand, closed the door after him, and hurried up the street, leaving Prosper standing immovable and overcome by disappointment.

He was aroused from his gloomy revery by hearing the red-whiskered man say, in a bantering tone: 

“So these are your friends.”

“Yes,” said Prosper with bitterness.  “You heard him offer me half his fortune?”

M. Verduret shrugged his shoulders with an air of compassion.

“That was very stingy on his part,” he said, “why did he not offer the whole?  Offers cost nothing; although I have no doubt that this sweet youth would cheerfully give ten thousand francs to put the ocean between you and him.”

“Monsieur! what reason?”

“Who knows?  Perhaps for the same reason that he had not set foot in his uncle’s house for a month.”

“But that is the truth, monsieur, I am sure of it.”

“Naturally,” said M. Verduret with a provoking smile.  “But,” he continued with a serious air, “we have devoted enough time to this Adonis.  Now, be good enough to change your dress, and we will go and call on M. Fauvel.”