“‘Ah!’ he continued, turning to me, ‘you will see that lovely creature I once told you about; I can hear a fine lady’s step in the corridor; it is she, no doubt;’ and, as a matter of fact, the young man came in with a woman on his arm. I recognized the Countess, whose levee Gobseck had described for me, one of old Goriot’s two daughters.
“The Countess did not see me at first; I stayed where I was in the window bay, with my face against the pane; but I saw her give Maxime a suspicious glance as she came into the money-lender’s damp, dark room. So beautiful she was, that in spite of her faults I felt sorry for her. There was a terrible storm of anguish in her heart; her haughty, proud features were drawn and distorted with pain which she strove in vain to disguise. The young man had come to be her evil genius. I admired Gobseck, whose perspicacity had foreseen their future four years ago at the first bill which she endorsed.
“‘Probably,’ said I to myself, ‘this monster with the angel face controls every possible spring of action in her: rules her through vanity, jealousy, pleasure, and the current of life in the world.’”
The Vicomtesse de Grandlieu broke in on the story.
“Why, the woman’s very virtues have been turned against her,” she exclaimed. “He has made her shed tears of devotion, and then abused her kindness and made her pay very dearly for unhallowed bliss.”
Derville did not understand the signs which Mme. de Grandlieu made to him.
“I confess,” he said, “that I had no inclination to shed tears over the lot of this unhappy creature, so brilliant in society, so repulsive to eyes that could read her heart; I shuddered rather at the sight of her murderer, a young angel with such a clear brow, such red lips and white teeth, such a winning smile. There they stood before their judge, he scrutinizing them much as some fifteenth-century Dominican inquisitor might have peered into the dungeons of the Holy Office while the torture was administered to two Moors.
“The Countess spoke tremulously. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘is there any way of obtaining the value of these diamonds, and of keeping the right of repurchase?’ She held out a jewel-case.
“‘Yes, madame,’ I put in, and came forwards.
“She looked at me, and a shudder ran through her as she recognized me, and gave me the glance which means, ‘Say nothing of this,’ all the world over.