When Calyste and Dommanget arrived, the duchess, who had given
instructions to the servants, was at once informed. She left Sabine to
the care of Madame de Portenduere and stopped the /accoucheur/ and
Calyste in the salon.

"Sabine's life is at stake, monsieur," she said to Calyste; "you have
betrayed her for Madame de Rochefide."

Calyste blushed, like a girl still respectable, detected in a fault.

"And," continued the duchess, "as you do not know how to deceive, you
have behaved in such a clumsy manner that Sabine has guessed the
truth. But I have for the present repaired your blunder. You do not
wish the death of my daughter, I am sure--All this, Monsieur
Dommanget, will put you on the track of her real illness and its
cause. As for you, Calyste, an old woman like me understands your
error, though she does not pardon it. Such pardons can only be brought
by a lifetime of after happiness. If you wish me to esteem you, you
must, in the first place, save my daughter; next, you must forget
Madame de Rochefide; she is only worth having once. Learn to lie; have
the courage of a criminal, and his impudence. I have just told a lie
myself, and I shall have to do hard penance for that mortal sin."

She then told the two men the lies she had invented. The clever
physician sitting at the bedside of his patient studied in her
symptoms the means of repairing the ill, while he ordered measures the
success of which depended on great rapidity of execution. Calyste
sitting at the foot of the bed strove to put into his glance an
expression of tenderness.