"We expiate the happiness of ten years in ten minutes," she heard the duchess say.
"A letter from Havre, madame."
Eleonore read the poet's prose without noticing the presence of Philoxene, whose amazement became still greater when she saw the dawn of fresh serenity on the duchess's face as she read further and further into the letter. Hold out a pole no thicker than a walking-
stick to a drowning man, and he will think it a high-road of safety.
The happy Eleonore believed in Canalis's good faith when she had read through the four pages in which love and business, falsehood and truth, jostled each other. She who, a few moments earlier, had sent for her husband to prevent Melchior's appointment while there was still time, was now seized with a spirit of generosity that amounted almost to the sublime.
"Poor fellow!" she thought; "he has not had one faithless thought; he loves me as he did on the first day; he tells me all--Philoxene!" she cried, noticing her maid, who was standing near and pretending to arrange the toilet-table.
"Madame la duchesse?"
"A mirror, child!"
Eleonore looked at herself, saw the fine razor-like lines traced on her brow, which disappeared at a little distance; she sighed, and in that sigh she felt she bade adieu to love. A brave thought came into her mind, a manly thought, outside of all the pettiness of women,--a thought which intoxicates for a moment, and which explains, perhaps, the clemency of the Semiramis of Russia when she married her young and beautiful rival to Momonoff.
"Since he has not been faithless, he shall have the girl and her millions," she thought,--"provided Mademoiselle Mignon is as ugly as he says she is."
Three raps, circumspectly given, announced the duke, and his wife went herself to the door to let him in.
"Ah! I see you are better, my dear," he cried, with the counterfeit joy that courtiers assume so readily, and by which fools are so readily taken in.
"My dear Henri," she answered, "why is it you have not yet obtained that appointment for Melchior,--you who sacrificed so much to the king in taking a ministry which you knew could only last one year."
The duke glanced at Philoxene, who showed him by an almost imperceptible sign the letter from Havre on the dressing-table.
"You would be terribly bored at Baden and come back at daggers drawn with Melchior," said the duke.
"Pray why?"
"Why, you would always be together," said the former diplomat, with comic good-humor.
"Oh, no," she said; "I am going to marry him."
"If we can believe d'Herouville, our dear Canalis stands in no need of your help in that direction," said the duke, smiling. "Yesterday Grandlieu read me some passages from a letter the grand equerry had written him. No doubt they were dictated by the aunt for the express purpose of their reaching you, for Mademoiselle d'Herouville, always on the scent of a 'dot,' knows that Grandlieu and I play whist nearly every evening. That good little d'Herouville wants the Prince de Cadignan to go down and give a royal hunt in Normandy, and endeavor to persuade the king to be present, so as to turn the head of the damozel when she sees herself the object of such a grand affair. In short, two words from Charles X. would settle the matter. D'Herouville says the girl has incomparable beauty--"
"Henri, let us go to Havre!" cried the duchess, interrupting him.
"Under what pretext?" said her husband, gravely; he was one of the confidants of Louis XVIII.
"I never saw a hunt."
"It would be all very well if the king went; but it is a terrible bore to go so far, and he will not do it; I have just been speaking with him about it."
"Perhaps MADAME would go?"
"That would be better," returned the duke, "I dare say the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse would help you to persuade her from Rosny. If she goes the king will not be displeased at the use of his hunting equipage.