meeting,--a think not permissible in any society. Diane de
Maufrigneuse nodded, however, as much as to say, "The child is in the
right of it." All the women ended by smiling at each other; they were
enraged with a woman who was fifty-six years old and still handsome
enough to put her fingers into the treasury and steal the dues of
youth. Melchior looked at Modeste with feverish impatience, and made
the gesture of a master to a valet, while the duchess lowered her head
with the movement of a lioness disturbed at a meal; her eyes, fastened
on the canvas, emitted red flames in the direction of the poet, which
stabbed like epigrams, for each word revealed to her a triple insult.

"Monsieur Melchior!" said Modeste again in a voice that asserted its
right to be heard.

"What, mademoiselle?" demanded the poet.

Forced to rise, he remained standing half-way between the embroidery
frame, which was near a window, and the fireplace where Modeste was
seated with the Duchesse de Verneuil on a sofa. What bitter
reflections came into his ambitious mind, as he caught a glance from
Eleonore. If he obeyed Modeste all was over, and forever, between
himself and his protectress. Not to obey her was to avow his slavery,
to lose the chances of his twenty-five days of base manoeuvring, and
to disregard the plainest laws of decency and civility. The greater
the folly, the more imperatively the duchess exacted it. Modeste's
beauty and money thus pitted against Eleonore's rights and influence
made this hesitation between the man and his honor as terrible to
witness as the peril of a matador in the arena. A man seldom feels
such palpitations as those which now came near causing Canalis an
aneurism, except, perhaps, before the green table, where his fortune