Buch lesen: «Parisians in the Country», Seite 9

“‘After two hours of care and alarms, the maid and I put her mistress to bed. The lover, forced into so perilous an adventure, had, to provide means in case of having to fly, a packet of diamonds stuck to paper; these he put into my pocket without my knowing it; and I may add parenthetically, that as I was ignorant of the Spaniard’s magnificent gift, my servant stole the jewels the day after, and went off with a perfect fortune.

“‘I whispered my instructions to the waiting-woman as to the further care of her patient, and wanted to be gone. The maid remained with her mistress, which was not very reassuring, but I was on my guard. The lover made a bundle of the dead infant and the blood-stained clothes, tying it up tightly, and hiding it under his cloak; he passed his hand over my eyes as if to bid me to see nothing, and signed to me to take hold of the skirt of his coat. He went first out of the room, and I followed, not without a parting glance at my lady of an hour. She, seeing the Spaniard had gone out, snatched off her mask and showed me an exquisite face.

“‘When I found myself in the garden, in the open air, I confess that I breathed as if a heavy load had been lifted from my breast. I followed my guide at a respectful distance, watching his least movement with keen attention. Having reached the little door, he took my hand and pressed a seal to my lips, set in a ring which I had seen him wearing on a finger of his left hand, and I gave him to understand that this significant sign would be obeyed. In the street two horses were waiting; we each mounted one. My Spaniard took my bridle, held his own between his teeth, for his right hand held the bloodstained bundle, and we went off at lightning speed.

“‘I could not see the smallest object by which to retrace the road we came by. At dawn I found myself close by my own door, and the Spaniard fled towards the Atocha gate.’

“‘And you saw nothing which could lead you to suspect who the woman was whom you had attended?’ the Colonel asked of the surgeon.

“‘One thing only,’ he replied. ‘When I turned the unknown lady over, I happened to remark a mole on her arm, about half-way down, as big as a lentil, and surrounded with brown hairs.’ – At this instant the rash speaker turned pale. All our eyes, that had been fixed on his, followed his glance, and we saw a Spaniard, whose glittering eyes shone through a clump of orange-trees. On finding himself the object of our attention, the man vanished with the swiftness of a sylph. A young captain rushed in pursuit.

“‘By Heaven!’ cried the surgeon, ‘that basilisk stare has chilled me through, my friends. I can hear bells ringing in my ears! I may take leave of you; you will bury me here!’

“‘What a fool you are!’ exclaimed Colonel Hulot. ‘Falcon is on the track of the Spaniard who was listening, and he will call him to account.’

“‘Well,’ cried one and another, seeing the captain return quite out of breath.

“‘The devil’s in it,’ said Falcon; ‘the man went through a wall, I believe! As I do not suppose that he is a wizard, I fancy he must belong to the house! He knows every corner and turning, and easily escaped.’

“‘I am done for,’ said the surgeon, in a gloomy voice.

“‘Come, come, keep calm, Bega,’ said I (his name was Bega), ‘we will sit on watch with you till you leave. We will not leave you this evening.’

“In point of fact, three young officers who had been losing at play went home with the surgeon to his lodgings, and one of us offered to stay with him.

“Within two days Bega had obtained his recall to France; he made arrangements to travel with a lady to whom Murat had given a strong escort, and had just finished dinner with a party of friends, when his servant came to say that a young lady wished to speak to him. The surgeon and the three officers went down suspecting mischief. The stranger could only say, ‘Be on your guard – ’ when she dropped down dead. It was the waiting-woman, who, finding she had been poisoned, had hoped to arrive in time to warn her lover.

“‘Devil take it!’ cried Captain Falcon, ‘that is what I call love! No woman on earth but a Spaniard can run about with a dose of poison in her inside!’

“Bega remained strangely pensive. To drown the dark presentiments that haunted him, he sat down to table again, and with his companions drank immoderately. The whole party went early to bed, half drunk.

“In the middle of the night the hapless Bega was aroused by the sharp rattle of the curtain rings pulled violently along the rods. He sat up in bed, in the mechanical trepidation which we all feel on waking with such a start. He saw standing before him a Spaniard wrapped in a cloak, who fixed on him the same burning gaze that he had seen through the bushes.

“Bega shouted out, ‘Help, help, come at once, friends!’ But the Spaniard answered his cry of distress with a bitter laugh. – ‘Opium grows for all!’ said he.

“Having thus pronounced sentence as it were, the stranger pointed to the three other men sleeping soundly, took from under his cloak the arm of a woman, freshly amputated, and held it out to Bega, pointing to a mole like that he had so rashly described. ‘Is it the same?’ he asked. By the light of the lantern the man had set on the bed, Bega recognized the arm, and his speechless amazement was answer enough.

“Without waiting for further information, the lady’s husband stabbed him to the heart.”

“You must tell that to the marines!” said Lousteau. “It needs their robust faith to swallow it! Can you tell me which told the tale, the dead man or the Spaniard?”

“Monsieur,” replied the Receiver-General, “I nursed poor Bega, who died five days after in dreadful suffering. – That is not the end.

“At the time of the expedition sent out to restore Ferdinand VII. I was appointed to a place in Spain; but, happily for me, I got no further than Tours when I was promised the post of Receiver here at Sancerre. On the eve of setting out I was at a ball at Madame de Listomere’s, where we were to meet several Spaniards of high rank. On rising from the card-table, I saw a Spanish grandee, an afrancesado in exile, who had been about a fortnight in Touraine. He had arrived very late at this ball – his first appearance in society – accompanied by his wife, whose right arm was perfectly motionless. Everybody made way in silence for this couple, whom we all watched with some excitement. Imagine a picture by Murillo come to life. Under black and hollow brows the man’s eyes were like a fixed blaze; his face looked dried up, his bald skull was red, and his frame was a terror to behold, he was so emaciated. His wife – no, you cannot imagine her. Her figure had the supple swing for which the Spaniards created the word meneho; though pale, she was still beautiful; her complexion was dazzlingly fair – a rare thing in a Spaniard; and her gaze, full of the Spanish sun, fell on you like a stream of melted lead.

“‘Madame,’ said I to her, towards the end of the evening, ‘what occurrence led to the loss of your arm?’

“‘I lost it in the war of independence,’ said she.”

“Spain is a strange country,” said Madame de la Baudraye. “It still shows traces of Arab manners.”

“Oh!” said the journalist, laughing, “the mania for cutting off arms is an old one there. It turns up every now and then like some of our newspaper hoaxes, for the subject has given plots for plays on the Spanish stage so early as 1570 – ”

“Then do you think me capable of inventing such a story?” said Monsieur Gravier, nettled by Lousteau’s impertinent tone.

“Quite incapable of such a thing,” said the journalist with grave irony.

“Pooh!” said Bianchon, “the inventions of romances and play-writers are quite as often transferred from their books and pieces into real life, as the events of real life are made use of on the stage or adapted to a tale. I have seen the comedy of Tartufe played out – with the exception of the close; Orgon’s eyes could not be opened to the truth.”

“And the tragi-comedy of Adolphe by Benjamin Constant is constantly enacted,” cried Lousteau.

“And do you suppose,” asked Madame de la Baudraye, “that such adventures as Monsieur Gravier has related could ever occur now, and in France?”

“Dear me!” cried Clagny, “of the ten or twelve startling crimes that are annually committed in France, quite half are mixed up with circumstances at least as extraordinary as these, and often outdoing them in romantic details. Indeed, is not this proved by the reports in the Gazette des Tribunaux– the Police news – in my opinion, one of the worst abuses of the Press? This newspaper, which was started only in 1826 or ‘27, was not in existence when I began my professional career, and the facts of the crime I am about to speak of were not known beyond the limits of the department where it was committed.

“In the quarter of Saint-Pierre-des-Corps at Tours a woman whose husband had disappeared at the time when the army of the Loire was disbanded, and who had mourned him deeply, was conspicuous for her excess of devotion. When the mission priests went through all the provinces to restore the crosses that had been destroyed and to efface the traces of revolutionary impiety, this widow was one of their most zealous proselytes, she carried a cross and nailed to it a silver heart pierced by an arrow; and, for a long time after, she went every evening to pray at the foot of the cross which was erected behind the Cathedral apse.

“At last, overwhelmed by remorse, she confessed to a horrible crime. She had killed her husband, as Fualdes was murdered, by bleeding him; she had salted the body and packed it in pieces into old casks, exactly as if it have been pork; and for a long time she had taken a piece every morning and thrown it into the Loire. Her confessor consulted his superiors, and told her that it would be his duty to inform the public prosecutor. The woman awaited the action of the Law. The public prosecutor and the examining judge, on examining the cellar, found the husband’s head still in pickle in one of the casks. – ‘Wretched woman,’ said the judge to the accused, ‘since you were so barbarous as to throw your husband’s body into the river, why did you not get rid of the head? Then there would have been no proof.’

“‘I often tried, monsieur,’ said she, ‘but it was too heavy.’”

“Well, and what became of the woman?” asked the two Parisians.

“She was sentenced and executed at Tours,” replied the lawyer; “but her repentance and piety had attracted interest in spite of her monstrous crime.”

“And do you suppose,” said Bianchon, “that we know all the tragedies that are played out behind the curtain of private life that the public never lifts? – It seems to me that human justice is ill adapted to judge of crimes as between husband and wife. It has every right to intervene as the police; but in equity it knows nothing of the heart of the matter.”

“The victim has in many cases been for so long the tormentor,” said Madame de la Baudraye guilelessly, “that the crime would sometimes seem almost excusable if the accused could tell all.”

This reply, led up to by Bianchon and by the story which Clagny had told, left the two Parisians excessively puzzled as to Dinah’s position.

At bedtime council was held, one of those discussions which take place in the passages of old country-houses where the bachelors linger, candle in hand, for mysterious conversations.

Monsieur Gravier was now informed of the object in view during this entertaining evening which had brought Madame de la Baudraye’s innocence to light.

“But, after all,” said Lousteau, “our hostess’ serenity may indicate deep depravity instead of the most child-like innocence. The Public Prosecutor looks to me quite capable of suggesting that little La Baudraye should be put in pickle – ”

“He is not to return till to-morrow; who knows what may happen in the course of the night?” said Gatien.

“We will know!” cried Monsieur Gravier.

In the life of a country house a number of practical jokes are considered admissible, some of them odiously treacherous. Monsieur Gravier, who had seen so much of the world, proposed setting seals on the door of Madame de la Baudraye and of the Public Prosecutor. The ducks that denounced the poet Ibycus are as nothing in comparison with the single hair that these country spies fasten across the opening of a door by means of two little flattened pills of wax, fixed so high up, or so low down, that the trick is never suspected. If the gallant comes out of his own door and opens the other, the broken hair tells the tale.

When everybody was supposed to be asleep, the doctor, the journalist, the receiver of taxes, and Gatien came barefoot, like robbers, and silently fastened up the two doors, agreeing to come again at five in the morning to examine the state of the fastenings. Imagine their astonishment and Gatien’s delight when all four, candle in hand, and with hardly any clothes on, came to look at the hairs, and found them in perfect preservation on both doors.

“Is it the same wax?” asked Monsieur Gravier.

“Are they the same hairs?” asked Lousteau.

“Yes,” replied Gatien.

“This quite alters the matter!” cried Lousteau. “You have been beating the bush for a will-o’-the-wisp.”

Monsieur Gravier and Gatien exchanged questioning glances which were meant to convey, “Is there not something offensive to us in that speech? Ought we to laugh or to be angry?”

“If Dinah is virtuous,” said the journalist in a whisper to Bianchon, “she is worth an effort on my part to pluck the fruit of her first love.”

The idea of carrying by storm a fortress that had for nine years stood out against the besiegers of Sancerre smiled on Lousteau.

With this notion in his head, he was the first to go down and into the garden, hoping to meet his hostess. And this chance fell out all the more easily because Madame de la Baudraye on her part wished to converse with her critic. Half such chances are planned.

“You were out shooting yesterday, monsieur,” said Madame de la Baudraye. “This morning I am rather puzzled as to how to find you any new amusement; unless you would like to come to La Baudraye, where you may study more of our provincial life than you can see here, for you have made but one mouthful of my absurdities. However, the saying about the handsomest girl in the world is not less true of the poor provincial woman!”

“That little simpleton Gatien has, I suppose, related to you a speech I made simply to make him confess that he adored you,” said Etienne. “Your silence, during dinner the day before yesterday and throughout the evening, was enough to betray one of those indiscretions which we never commit in Paris. – What can I say? I do not flatter myself that you will understand me. In fact, I laid a plot for the telling of all those stories yesterday solely to see whether I could rouse you and Monsieur de Clagny to a pang of remorse. – Oh! be quite easy; your innocence is fully proved.

“If you had the slightest fancy for that estimable magistrate, you would have lost all your value in my eyes. – I love perfection.

“You do not, you cannot love that cold, dried-up, taciturn little usurer on wine casks and land, who would leave any man in the lurch for twenty-five centimes on a renewal. Oh, I have fully recognized Monsieur de la Baudraye’s similarity to a Parisian bill-discounter; their nature is identical. – At eight-and-twenty, handsome, well conducted, and childless – I assure you, madame, I never saw the problem of virtue more admirably expressed. – The author of Paquita la Sevillane must have dreamed many dreams!

“I can speak of such things without the hypocritical gloss lent them by young men, for I am old before my time. I have no illusions left. Can a man have any illusions in the trade I follow?”

By opening the game in this tone, Lousteau cut out all excursions in the Pays de Tendre, where genuine passion beats the bush so long; he went straight to the point and placed himself in a position to force the offer of what women often make a man pray for, for years; witness the hapless Public Prosecutor, to whom the greatest favor had consisted in clasping Dinah’s hand to his heart more tenderly than usual as they walked, happy man!

And Madame de la Baudraye, to be true to her reputation as a Superior Woman, tried to console the Manfred of the Press by prophesying such a future of love as he had not had in his mind.

“You have sought pleasure,” said she, “but you have never loved. Believe me, true love often comes late in life. Remember Monsieur de Gentz, who fell in love in his old age with Fanny Ellsler, and left the Revolution of July to take its course while he attended the dancer’s rehearsals.”

“It seems to me unlikely,” replied Lousteau. “I can still believe in love, but I have ceased to believe in woman. There are in me, I suppose, certain defects which hinder me from being loved, for I have often been thrown over. Perhaps I have too strong a feeling for the ideal – like all men who have looked too closely into reality – ”

Madame de la Baudraye at last heard the mind of a man who, flung into the wittiest Parisian circles, represented to her its most daring axioms, its almost artless depravity, its advanced convictions; who, if he were not really superior, acted superiority extremely well. Etienne, performing before Dinah, had all the success of a first night. Paquita of Sancerre scented the storms, the atmosphere of Paris. She spent one of the most delightful days of her life with Lousteau and Bianchon, who told her strange tales about the great men of the day, the anecdotes which will some day form the Ana of our century; sayings and doings that were the common talk of Paris, but quite new to her.

Of course, Lousteau spoke very ill of the great female celebrity of Le Berry, with the obvious intention of flattering Madame de la Baudraye and leading her into literary confidences, by suggesting that she could rival so great a writer. This praise intoxicated Madame de la Baudraye; and Monsieur de Clagny, Monsieur Gravier, and Gatien, all thought her warmer in her manner to Etienne than she had been on the previous day. Dinah’s three attaches greatly regretted having all gone to Sancerre to blow the trumpet in honor of the evening at Anzy; nothing, to hear them, had ever been so brilliant. The Hours had fled on feet so light that none had marked their pace. The two Parisians they spoke of as perfect prodigies.

These exaggerated reports loudly proclaimed on the Mall brought sixteen persons to Anzy that evening, some in family coaches, some in wagonettes, and a few bachelors on hired saddle horses. By about seven o’clock this provincial company had made a more or less graceful entry into the huge Anzy drawing-room, which Dinah, warned of the invasion, had lighted up, giving it all the lustre it was capable of by taking the holland covers off the handsome furniture, for she regarded this assembly as one of her great triumphs. Lousteau, Bianchon, and Dinah exchanged meaning looks as they studied the attitudes and listened to the speeches of these visitors, attracted by curiosity.

What invalided ribbons, what ancestral laces, what ancient flowers, more imaginative than imitative, were boldly displayed on some perennial caps! The Presidente Boirouge, Bianchon’s cousin, exchanged a few words with the doctor, from whom she extracted some “advice gratis” by expatiating on certain pains in the chest, which she declared were nervous, but which he ascribed to chronic indigestion.

“Simply drink a cup of tea every day an hour after dinner, as the English do, and you will get over it, for what you suffer from is an English malady,” Bianchon replied very gravely.

“He is certainly a great physician,” said the Presidente, coming back to Madame de Clagny, Madame Popinot-Chandier, and Madame Gorju, the Mayor’s wife.

“They say,” replied Madame de Clagny behind her fan, “that Dinah sent for him, not so much with a view to the elections as to ascertain why she has no children.”

In the first excitement of this success, Lousteau introduced the great doctor as the only possible candidate at the ensuing elections. But Bianchon, to the great satisfaction of the new Sous-prefet, remarked that it seemed to him almost impossible to give up science in favor of politics.

“Only a physician without a practice,” said he, “could care to be returned as a deputy. Nominate statesmen, thinkers, men whose knowledge is universal, and who are capable of placing themselves on the high level which a legislator should occupy. That is what is lacking in our Chambers, and what our country needs.”

Two or three young ladies, some of the younger men, and the elder women stared at Lousteau as if he were a mountebank.

“Monsieur Gatien Boirouge declares that Monsieur Lousteau makes twenty thousand francs a year by his writings,” observed the Mayor’s wife to Madame de Clagny. “Can you believe it?”

“Is it possible? Why, a Public Prosecutor gets but a thousand crowns!”

“Monsieur Gatien,” said Madame Chandier, “get Monsieur Lousteau to talk a little louder. I have not heard him yet.”

“What pretty boots he wears,” said Mademoiselle Chandier to her brother, “and how they shine!”

“Yes – patent leather.”

“Why haven’t you the same?”

Lousteau began to feel that he was too much on show, and saw in the manners of the good townsfolk indications of the desires that had brought them there.

“What trick can I play them?” thought he.

At this moment the footman, so called – a farm-servant put into livery – brought in the letters and papers, and among them a packet of proof, which the journalist left for Bianchon; for Madame de la Baudraye, on seeing the parcel, of which the form and string were obviously from the printers, exclaimed:

“What, does literature pursue you even here?”

“Not literature,” replied he, “but a review in which I am now finishing a story to come out ten days hence. I have reached the stage of ‘To be concluded in our next,’ so I was obliged to give my address to the printer. Oh, we eat very hard-earned bread at the hands of these speculators in black and white! I will give you a description of these editors of magazines.”

“When will the conversation begin?” Madame de Clagny asked of Dinah, as one might ask, “When do the fireworks go off?”

“I fancied we should hear some amusing stories,” said Madame Popinot to her cousin, the Presidente Boirouge.

At this moment, when the good folks of Sancerre were beginning to murmur like an impatient pit, Lousteau observed that Bianchon was lost in meditation inspired by the wrapper round the proofs.

“What is it?” asked Etienne.

“Why, here is the most fascinating romance possible on some spoiled proof used to wrap yours in. Here, read it. Olympia, or Roman Revenge.”

“Let us see,” said Lousteau, taking the sheet the doctor held out to him, and he read aloud as follows: —

240 OLYMPIA

cavern. Rinaldo, indignant at his companions’ cowardice, for they had no courage but in the open field, and dared not venture into Rome, looked at them with scorn.

“Then I go alone?” said he. He seemed to reflect, and then he went on: “You are poor wretches. I shall proceed alone, and have the rich booty to myself. – You hear me! Farewell.”

“My Captain,” said Lamberti, “if you should be captured without having succeeded?”

“God protects me!” said Rinaldo, pointing to the sky.

With these words he went out, and on his way he met the steward

“That is the end of the page,” said Lousteau, to whom every one had listened devoutly.

“He is reading his work to us,” said Gatien to Madame Popinot-Chandier’s son.

“From the first word, ladies,” said the journalist, jumping at an opportunity of mystifying the natives, “it is evident that the brigands are in a cave. But how careless romancers of that date were as to details which are nowadays so closely, so elaborately studied under the name of ‘local color.’ If the robbers were in a cavern, instead of pointing to the sky he ought to have pointed to the vault above him. – In spite of this inaccuracy, Rinaldo strikes me as a man of spirit, and his appeal to God is quite Italian. There must have been a touch of local color in this romance. Why, what with brigands, and a cavern, and one Lamberti who could foresee future possibilities – there is a whole melodrama in that page. Add to these elements a little intrigue, a peasant maiden with her hair dressed high, short skirts, and a hundred or so of bad couplets. – Oh! the public will crowd to see it! And then Rinaldo – how well the name suits Lafont! By giving him black whiskers, tightly-fitting trousers, a cloak, a moustache, a pistol, and a peaked hat – if the manager of the Vaudeville Theatre were but bold enough to pay for a few newspaper articles, that would secure fifty performances, and six thousand francs for the author’s rights, if only I were to cry it up in my columns.

“To proceed: —

OR ROMAN REVENGE 219

The Duchess of Bracciano found her glove. Adolphe, who had brought her back to the orange grove, might certainly have supposed that there was some purpose in her forgetfulness, for at this moment the arbor was deserted. The sound of the festivities was audible in the distance. The puppet show that had been promised had attracted all the guests to the ballroom. Never had Olympia looked more beautiful. Her lover’s eyes met hers with an answering glow, and they understood each other. There was a moment of silence, delicious to their souls, and impossible to describe. They sat down on the same bench where they had sat in the presence of the Cavaliere Paluzzi and the

“Devil take it! Our Rinaldo has vanished!” cried Lousteau. “But a literary man once started by this page would make rapid progress in the comprehension of the plot. The Duchesse Olympia is a lady who could intentionally forget her gloves in a deserted arbor.”

“Unless she may be classed between the oyster and head-clerk of an office, the two creatures nearest to marble in the zoological kingdom, it is impossible to discern in Olympia – ” Bianchon began.

“A woman of thirty,” Madame de la Baudraye hastily interposed, fearing some all too medical term.

“Then Adolphe must be two-and-twenty,” the doctor went on, “for an Italian woman at thirty is equivalent to a Parisian of forty.”

“From these two facts, the romance may easily be reconstructed,” said Lousteau. “And this Cavaliere Paluzzi – what a man! – The style is weak in these two passages; the author was perhaps a clerk in the Excise Office, and wrote the novel to pay his tailor!”

“In his time,” said Bianchon, “the censor flourished; you must show as much indulgence to a man who underwent the ordeal by scissors in 1805 as to those who went to the scaffold in 1793.”

“Do you understand in the least?” asked Madame Gorju timidly of Madame de Clagny.

The Public Prosecutor’s wife, who, to use a phrase of Monsieur Gravier’s, might have put a Cossack to flight in 1814, straightened herself in her chair like a horseman in his stirrups, and made a face at her neighbor, conveying, “They are looking at us; we must smile as if we understood.”

“Charming!” said the Mayoress to Gatien. “Pray go on, Monsieur Lousteau.”

Lousteau looked at the two women, two Indian idols, and contrived to keep his countenance. He thought it desirable to say, “Attention!” before going on as follows: —

OR ROMAN REVENGE 209

dress rustled in the silence. Suddenly Cardinal Borborigano stood before the Duchess.

“His face was gloomy, his brow was dark with clouds, and a bitter smile lurked in his wrinkles.

“Madame,” said he, “you are under suspicion. If you are guilty, fly. If you are not, still fly; because, whether criminal or innocent, you will find it easier to defend yourself from a distance.”

“I thank your Eminence for your solicitude,” said she. “The Duke of Bracciano will reappear when I find it needful to prove that he is alive.”

“Cardinal Borborigano!” exclaimed Bianchon. “By the Pope’s keys! If you do not agree with me that there is a magnificent creation in the very name, if at those words dress rustled in the silence you do not feel all the poetry thrown into the part of Schedoni by Mrs. Radcliffe in The Black Penitent, you do not deserve to read a romance.”

“For my part,” said Dinah, who had some pity on the eighteen faces gazing up at Lousteau, “I see how the story is progressing. I know it all. I am in Rome; I can see the body of a murdered husband whose wife, as bold as she is wicked, has made her bed on the crater of a volcano. Every night, at every kiss, she says to herself, ‘All will be discovered!’”

“Can you see her,” said Lousteau, “clasping Monsieur Adolphe in her arms, to her heart, throwing her whole life into a kiss? – Adolphe I see as a well-made young man, but not clever – the sort of man an Italian woman likes. Rinaldo hovers behind the scenes of a plot we do not know, but which must be as full of incident as a melodrama by Pixerecourt. Or we can imagine Rinaldo crossing the stage in the background like a figure in one of Victor Hugo’s plays.”

“He, perhaps, is the husband,” exclaimed Madame de la Baudraye.

“Do you understand anything of it all?” Madame Piedefer asked of the Presidente.

“Why, it is charming!” said Dinah to her mother.

All the good folks of Sancerre sat with eyes as large as five-franc pieces.

“Go on, I beg,” said the hostess.

Lousteau went on: —

210 OLYMPIA

“Your key – ”

“Have you lost it?”

“It is in the arbor.”

“Let us hasten.”

“Can the Cardinal have taken it?”

“No, here it is.”

“What danger we have escaped!”

Olympia looked at the key, and fancied she recognized it as her own.

But Rinaldo had changed it; his cunning had triumphed; he had the right key. Like a modern Cartouche, he was no less skilful than bold, and suspecting that nothing but a vast treasure could require a duchess to carry it constantly at her belt.

“Guess!” cried Lousteau. “The corresponding page is not here. We must look to page 212 to relieve our anxiety.”

212 OLYMPIA

“If the key had been lost?”

“He would now be a dead man.”

“Dead? But ought you not to grant the last request he made, and to give him his liberty on the conditions – ”

“You do not know him.”

“But – ”

“Silence! I took you for my lover, not for my confessor.”

Adolphe was silent.

“And then comes an exquisite galloping goat, a tail-piece drawn by Normand, and cut by Duplat. – the names are signed,” said Lousteau.