“Where am I?” asked he, looking about him.
“Listen to me,” said Asie, “and that will sober you.—Though you do not love Madame du Val-Noble, you love your daughter, I suppose?”
“My daughter?” Peyrade echoed with a roar.
“Yes, Mademoiselle Lydie.”
“What then?”
“What then? She is no longer in the Rue des Moineaux; she has been carried off.”
Peyrade breathed a sigh like that of a soldier dying of a mortal wound on the battlefield.
“While you were pretending to be an Englishman, some one else was pretending to be Peyrade. Your little Lydie thought she was with her father, and she is now in a safe place.—Oh! you will never find her! unless you undo the mischief you have done.”
“What mischief?”
“Yesterday Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre had the door shut in his face at the Duc de Grandlieu’s. This is due to your intrigues, and to the man you let loose on us. Do not speak, listen!” Asie went on, seeing Peyrade open his mouth. “You will have your daughter again, pure and spotless,” she added, emphasizing her statement by the accent on every word, “only on the day after that on which Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre walks out of Saint-Thomas d’Aquin as the husband of Mademoiselle Clotilde. If, within ten days Lucien de Rubempre is not admitted, as he has been, to the Grandlieus’ house, you, to begin with, will die a violent death, and nothing can save you from the fate that threatens you.—Then, when you feel yourself dying, you will have time before breathing your last to reflect, ‘My daughter is a prostitute for the rest of her life!’