The countess, on the other hand, happy in the thought that she had
saved Raoul's life, spent the night in devising means to obtain the
forty thousand francs. In emergencies like these women are sublime;
they find contrivances which would astonish thieves, business men, and
usurers, if those three classes of industrials were capable of being
astonished. First, the countess sold her diamonds and decided on
wearing paste; then she resolved to ask the money from Vandenesse on
her sister's account; but these were dishonorable means, and her soul
was too noble not to recoil at them; she merely conceived them, and
cast them from her. Ask money of Vandenesse to give to Nathan! She
bounded in her bed with horror at such baseness. Wear false diamonds
to deceive her husband! Next she thought of borrowing the money from
the Rothschilds, who had so much, or from the archbishop of Paris,
whose mission it was to help persons in distress; darting thus from
thought to thought, seeking help in all. She deplored belonging to a
class opposed to the government. Formerly, she could easily have
borrowed the money on the steps of the throne. She thought of
appealing to her father, the Comte de Granville. But that great
magistrate had a horror of illegalities; his children knew how little
he sympathized with the trials of love; he was now a misanthrope and
held all affairs of the heart in horror.
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