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“Oh! nothing that would interest you,” replied his wife.

Monsieur de Listomere tranquilly returned to the reading of his paper, and presently said:–

“Ah! Madame de Mortsauf is dead; your poor brother has, no doubt, gone to Clochegourde.”

“Are you aware, monsieur,” resumed the marquise, turning to Eugene, “that what you have just said is a great impertinence?”

“If I did not know the strictness of your principles,” he answered, naively, “I should think that you wished either to give me ideas which I deny myself, or else to tear a secret from me. But perhaps you are only amusing yourself with me.”

The marquise smiled. That smile annoyed Eugene.

“Madame,” he said, “can you still believe in an offence I have not committed? I earnestly hope that chance may not enable you to discover the name of the person who ought to have read that letter.”

“What! can it be still Madame de Nucingen?” cried Madame de Listomere, more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the impertinence of the young man’s speeches.

Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not to blush at being taxed with a fidelity that women laugh at–in order, perhaps, not to show that they envy it. However, he replied with tolerable self-possession:–

“Why not, madame?”

Such are the blunders we all make at twenty-five.

This speech caused a violent commotion in Madame de Listomere’s bosom; but Rastignac did not yet know how to analyze a woman’s face by a rapid or sidelong glance. The lips of the marquise paled, but that was all. She rang the bell for wood, and so constrained Rastignac to rise and take his leave.

“If that be so,” said the marquise, stopping Eugene with a cold and rigid manner, “you will find it difficult to explain, monsieur, why your pen should, by accident, write my name. A name, written on a letter, is not a friend’s opera-hat, which you might have taken, carelessly, on leaving a ball.”

Eugene, discomfited, looked at the marquise with an air that was both stupid and conceited. He felt that he was becoming ridiculous; and after stammering a few juvenile phrases he left the room.

A few days later the marquise acquired undeniable proofs that Eugene had told the truth. For the last fortnight she has not been seen in society.

The marquis tells all those who ask him the reason of this seclusion:–

“My wife has an inflammation of the stomach.”

But I, her physician, who am now attending her, know it is really nothing more than a slight nervous attack, which she is making the most of in order to stay quietly at home.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bianchon, Horace
Father Goriot
The Atheist's Mass
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Secrets of a Princess
The Government Clerks
Pierrette
A Study of Woman
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Honorine
The Seamy Side of History
The Magic Skin
A Second Home
A Prince of Bohemia
Letters of Two Brides
The Muse of the Department
The Imaginary Mistress
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
The Country Parson
In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
Another Study of Woman

Joseph
The Magic Skin

Listomere, Marquis de
The Lily of the Valley
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Listomere, Marquise de
The Lily of the Valley
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Daughter of Eve

Rastignac, Eugene de
Father Goriot
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Ball at Sceaux
The Interdiction
Another Study of Woman
The Magic Skin
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
The Gondreville Mystery
The Firm of Nucingen
Cousin Betty
The Member for Arcis
The Unconscious Humorists