"Go home!" said my father, putting me into the carriage. "I will return on foot. You have disgraced yourself; you have disgraced me. Hand yourself over to Joubert. You are to be a prisoner under lock and key until I devise some punishment to meet your case." Then, to the coachman: "Home, Lubin!" He clapped the door on me, and I was driven off, with his speech ringing in my ears, a speech which I believe was meant as much for the gallery as for me. This was my first encounter with the Comte de Coigny, and I believe I had the worst of it. But I was not thinking of De Coigny—I was thinking of little Eloise, of the Countess whose beauty haunted me, and of the Count, that noble-looking gentleman, now in prison.

Eloise had told me that their house in Paris was situated in the Faubourg St. Germain, and, as we turned out of the Rue de Lille, an inspiration came to me. I pulled the check-string, the carriage stopped, and I put my head out of the window.

"Lubin!"

"Well?"

"Drive me to the Faubourg St. Germain."

"Likely, indeed! and lose my place. Ma foi!—Faubourg St. Germain!"

"Lubin! I have a napoleon in my pocket, and I'll give it you if——"

But the carriage drove on.

I sank back on the cushions, but I was not defeated yet. There was a block of traffic in the Rue de TrÔne. I put my hand out, opened the door on the left side, and the next moment I was standing upon the pavement, and the heavy old carriage was driving on, with the door swinging open.

Then I ran, ran till I was out of breath, and in a broad street full of shops.

A barrel-organ was playing in the sunshine; a herd of she-asses were trotting along, followed by an Auvergnat in sabots, and a cabriolet plying for hire was approaching on the opposite side of the way.

I hailed the driver, and told him to take me to the Faubourg St. Germain.

"Where to in the Faubourg St. Germain?" asked the man.

"I want to go to the Count Feliciani's," I replied.

"The HÔtel Feliciani?"

"Yes"

"Get in." He drove off. He knew the HÔtel Feliciani, did this driver. All Paris was ringing with the disgrace of the man who, from his throne in the kingdom of finance, had fallen to the gutter, involving a thousand others in his ruin. But I knew nothing of this; and from the man's unconcerned manner I began to hope that De Coigny had told me a lie.

The cabriolet drove in through the gates of a huge hÔtel in the Faubourg St. Germain. The courtyard was crowded with people—and such people! Jews, porters, female furniture dealers with heavy earrings, silken skirts, and ungloved, unwashed hands—all the sharks that ruin attracts; and in the portico, on the steps, on the very gravel of the drive, furniture, crystal chandeliers, tables, mirrors, lying like the dÉbris left by the wave of misfortune.

It was as if one were looking at a lee shore the morning after the wreck of some palatial ship: cabin-furniture, stores, the sailor's sea-chest and the passengers' baggage, tossed up on the sands in horrible incongruity, and speaking louder than a thousand trumpets of the fury of the storm.

There was a sale in progress at the HÔtel Feliciani. I knew nothing of sales, I knew nothing of finance, speculation, or commercial ruin, but I knew that what I saw was disaster.

Getting out of the cabriolet, and telling the driver to wait for me, I went up the steps and mixed with the throng in the hall. I wanted to find the Felicianis, and some instinct told me they were not here; also, that it was useless to ask any of these people their whereabouts. I looked about me for someone in authority; and, as I looked, a voice from the large salon adjoining the hall came:

"Thirty thousand francs! Thirty thousand francs! Any advance on thirty thousand francs? Gone!" Then followed the blow of a little hammer.

They were selling the pictures. I turned to the doorway of the great salon and squeezed my way in. The place was filled with people—all Paris was there. Men who had shaken the Count Feliciani by the hand, women who had kissed the Countess on the cheek, men and women of the highest nobility, of the greatest intelligence—trÈs propre, to use the words of the old fool in De Morny's ante-chamber—were here, battening on the sight, and trying to snatch bargains from the ruin of their one-time friends. The Felicianis, as I afterwards learned, all but beggared, had been cast adrift, mother and daughter, by society; cast out like lepers from the pure precincts of the Court circle and the buckramed salons of the Royalist clique.

M. Hamard, the auctioneer, on his estrade, before his desk, a man in steel spectacles, the living image of the late unlamented Procurator of the Holy Synod, was clearing his throat before offering the next lot, a Gerard Dow, eighteen inches by twelve.

As the bidding leaped up by a thousand francs at a time, I edged my way through the throng closer and closer to the auctioneer, treading on dainty toes, wedging myself in between whispering acquaintances, regardless of grumbles and muttered imprecations, till I was right beside the estrade and within plucking distance of the auctioneer's coat.

"Sixty-five thousand francs!" cried M. Hamard. "This priceless Gerard Dow—sixty-five thousand francs. Any advance on sixty-five thousand francs? Gone! Well, what is it, little boy?"

"Please," said I, "can you tell me where I can find the Countess Feliciani?"

A dead silence took the room, for my nervousness had made me speak louder than I intended. People looked at one another; an awkward silence it must have been following the voice of the enfant terrible flinging the name of the woman they had cast out and deserted into the face of these worldlings who had come to examine her effects and snatch bargains from her ruin.

M. Hamard, aghast, stared down at me through his spectacles.

"You—— Who are you?" said he.

"I am her friend. My name is Patrick Mahon. My father is General Count Mahon, and I wish to see the Countess Feliciani."

M. Hamard seized a pen from the desk, scribbled some words on a piece of paper, and handed it to me.

"Go," he said. "That is the address. You are interrupting the sale."

Then, with the paper in my hand, I came back through the crush without difficulty, for the crowd made a lane for me down which I walked, paper in hand, a child of nine, the last and only friend of the once great and powerful Felicianis.

I read the address on the piece of paper to the driver of the cabriolet.

"Ma foi!" said he, "but that is a long way from here."

"Drive me there," said I.

"Yes; that is all very well, but how about my fare?"

I showed him my napoleon, got into the vehicle, and we drove off.

It was indeed a long way from there. We retook the route by which we had come, we drove through the broad streets, through the great boulevards, and then we plunged into a quarter of the city where the streets were shrunken and mean, where the people were in keeping with the streets, and the light of the bright September day seemed dull as the light of December.

At the HÔtel de Mayence in the Rue Ancelot we drew up. It was a respectable, third-rate hotel. A black cat was crouched in the doorway, watching the street with imperturbable yellow eyes, and a waiter with a stained serviette in his hand made his appearance at the sound of the vehicle drawing up.

Yes; Madame Feliciani was in: he would go up and see whether she could receive visitors. I waited, trying to make friends with the sphinx-like cat; then I was shown upstairs, and into a shabby sitting-room overlooking the street.

By the window, stitching at a child's small garment, sat an old lady with snow-white hair. It was the Countess Feliciani.

It was as if I had seen by some horrible enchantment a woman of thirty-five, happy and beautiful, surrounded by the wealth and luxury of life, suddenly withered, touched by the wand of some malevolent fairy and transformed into a woman old and poor.

It was my first lesson in the realities of life, this fairy tale, which, for hidden terror, put Vogel's story of the old woman who made the whistles completely in the shade.

Next moment I was at her knee, blubbering, with my nose rubbing the bombazine of her black skirt—for she was in mourning—and next moment little Eloise was in her room, looking just the same as ever, and I was being comforted as if all the misfortune were mine; and Madame Feliciani, for so she chose to be styled, was smiling for the first time, I am sure, since the disaster. A late dÉjeÛner was brought in, and I was given a place at the table. It is all misty and strange in my mind. A few things of absolute unimportance stand out—the coat of the waiter, shiny at the elbows; the hotel dog that came in for scraps; the knives and forks, worn and second-rate—but of what we said to each other I remember nothing.

"And you will come and see us?" said I as I took my departure.

"Some day," replied the Countess, with a smile, the significance of which I now understand, as I understand the horrible mockery of my innocent invitation.

Eloise ran down to see me off; and the last I saw of her was a small figure standing at the door of the hotel, and holding in its arms the black cat with the imperturbable yellow eyes.

When we arrived at the Champs ElysÉes I was so frightened with my doings that I gave the driver the whole napoleon without waiting for change, and then I went to meet my doom like a man, and confessed the whole business to my father.

The sentence was expulsion from Paris to the pavilion in the grounds of the ChÂteau de Saluce, whither, accordingly, I was transported next day with Joubert for a gaoler.