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In fine, he told her all the highly colored tales that envy and malice and ignorance had been able to concoct concerning the great Duke. Many of them John Bulmer knew to be false; nevertheless, he had a large mythology to choose from, he picked his instances with care, he narrated them with gusto and discretion,–and in the end he got his reward.

For the girl rose, flame-faced, and burlesqued a courtesy in his direction. “Monsieur Bulmer, I make you my compliments. You have very fully explained what manner of man is this to whom my brother has sold me.”

“And wherefore do you accord me this sudden adulation?” said John Bulmer.

“Because in France we have learned that lackeys are always powerful. Le Bel is here omnipotent, Monsieur Bulmer; but he is lackey to a satyr only; and therefore, I felicitate you, monsieur, who are lackey to a fiend.”

John Bulmer looked rather grave. “Civility is an inexpensive wear, mademoiselle, but it becomes everybody.”

“Lackey!” she flung over her shoulder, as she left him.

John Bulmer began to whistle an air then popular across the Channel. Later his melody was stilled.

“‘Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil!'” said John Bulmer. “You have an eye, Gaston!”

IV

That evening came a letter from Gaston to de Soyecourt, which the latter read aloud at supper. Gossip of the court it was for the most part, garrulous, and peppered with deductions of a caustic and diverting sort, but containing no word of a return to Bellegarde, in this vocal rendering. For in the reading one paragraph was elided.

“I arrive,” the Duke had written, “within three or at most four days after this will be received. You are to breathe not a syllable of my coming, dear Louis, for I do not come alone. Achille Cazaio has intimidated Poictesme long enough; I consider it is not desirable that a peer of France should be at the mercy of a chicken-thief, particularly when Fortune whispers, as the lady now does:

“Viens punir le coupable;
Les oracles, les dieux, tout nous est favorable.

“Understand, in fine, that Madame de Pompadour has graciously obtained for me the loan of the dragoons of Entréchat for an entire fortnight, so that I return not in submission, but, like Cæsar and Coriolanus and other exiled captains of antiquity, at the head of a glorious army. We will harry the Taunenfels, we will hang the vile bandit more high than Haman of old, we will, in a word, enjoy the supreme pleasure of the chase, enhanced by the knowledge we pursue a note-worthy quarry. Homicide is, after all, the most satisfying recreation life affords us, since man alone knows how thoroughly man deserves to be slaughtered. A tiger, now, has his deficiencies, perhaps, viewed as a roommate; yet a tiger is at least acceptable to the eye, a vision very pleasantly suggestive, we will say, of buttered toast; whereas, our fellow-creatures, my dear Louis,–” And in this strain de Puysange continued, with intolerably scandalous examples as parapets for his argument.

That night de Soyecourt re-read this paragraph. “So the Pompadour has kindly tendered him the loan of certain dragoons? She is very fond of Gaston, is la petite Étoiles, beyond doubt. And accordingly her dragoons are to garrison Bellegarde for a whole fortnight. Good, good!” said the Marquis; “I think that all goes well.”

He sat for a long while, smiling, preoccupied with his imaginings, which were far adrift in the future. Louis de Soyecourt was a subtle little man, freakish and amiable, and, on a minute scale, handsome. He reminded people of a dissipated elf; his excesses were notorious, yet always he preserved the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of an aging seraph; and bodily there was as yet no trace of the corpulence which marred his later years.

To-night he slept soundly. His conscience was always, they say, to the very end of his long life, the conscience of a child, vulnerable by physical punishment, but by nothing else.