brink of a precipice. A quadrille, a ballad, a picnic party is
sometimes cause sufficient of frightful evils. You are hurried on by
the presumptuous voice of vanity and pride, on the faith of a smile,
or through giddiness and folly! Shame and misery and remorse are three
Furies awaiting every woman the moment she oversteps the limits----"

"Poor Camille can hardly keep awake," the Vicomtesse hastily broke in.
--"Go to bed, child; you have no need of appalling pictures to keep
you pure in heart and conduct."

Camille de Grandlieu took the hint and went.

"You were going rather too far, dear M. Derville," said the
Vicomtesse, "an attorney is not a mother of daughters nor yet a
preacher."

"But any newspaper is a thousand times----"

"Poor Derville!" exclaimed the Vicomtesse, "what has come over you? Do
you really imagine that I allow a daughter of mine to read the
newspapers?--Go on," she added after a pause.

"Three months after everything was signed and sealed between the Count
and Gobseck----"

"You can call him the Comte de Restaud, now that Camille is not here,"
said the Vicomtesse.

"So be it! Well, time went by, and I saw nothing of the counter-deed,
which by rights should have been in my hands. An attorney in Paris