or his ruin is about to be decided.

"Mademoiselle d'Herouville hurried me from the carriage, and I left
behind me," said Modeste to Canalis, "my handkerchief--"

Canalis shrugged his shoulders significantly.

"And," continued Modeste, taking no notice of his gesture, "I had tied
into one corner of it the key of a desk which contains the fragment of
an important letter; have the kindness, Monsieur Melchior, to get it
for me."

Between an angel and a tiger equally enraged Canalis, who had turned
livid, no longer hesitated,--the tiger seemed to him the least
dangerous of the two; and he was about to do as he was told, and
commit himself irretrievably, when La Briere appeared at the door of
the salon, seeming to his anguished mind like the archangel Gabriel
tumbling from heaven.

"Ernest, here, Mademoiselle de La Bastie wants you," said the poet,
hastily returning to his chair by the embroidery frame.

Ernest rushed to Modeste without bowing to any one; he saw only her,
took his commission with undisguised joy, and darted from the room,
with the secret approbation of every woman present.

"What an occupation for a poet!" said Modeste to Helene d'Herouville,
glancing toward the embroidery at which the duchess was now working
savagely.