One evening very late, about a week after his visit to Madame de Cintre, Newman's servant brought him a card.

It was that of young M.de Bellegarde.

When, a few moments later, he went to receive his visitor, he found him standing in the middle of his great gilded parlor and eying it from cornice to carpet.

M.de Bellegarde's face, it seemed to Newman, expressed a sense of lively entertainment.

"What the devil is he laughing at now ?" our hero asked himself.