“Dear,” replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil, taking Francine’s hand and patting it, “your voice is very sweet and persuasive. Reason is attractive from your lips. I should like to obey you, but—”
“You will forgive him, you will not betray him?”
“Hush! never speak of that man again. Compared with him Corentin is a noble being. Do you hear me?”
She rose, hiding beneath a face that was horribly calm the madness of her soul and a thirst for vengeance. The slow and measured step with which she left the room conveyed the sense of an irrevocable resolution. Lost in thought, hugging her insults, too proud to show the slightest suffering, she went to the guard-room at the Porte Saint-Leonard and asked where the commandant lived. She had hardly left her house when Corentin entered it.
“Oh, Monsieur Corentin,” cried Francine, “if you are interested in this young man, save him; Mademoiselle has gone to give him up because of this wretched letter.”
Corentin took the letter carelessly and asked,—
“Which way did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes,” he said, “I will save her from her own despair.”
He disappeared, taking the letter with him. When he reached the street he said to Galope-Chopine’s boy, whom he had stationed to watch the door, “Which way did a lady go who left the house just now?”