Maxime and d'Ajuda could not refrain from smiling at the idea of this
agreement between heaven and hell.

"To prevent Madame de Rochefide from ever seeing Calyste again," she
continued, "we will all travel, Juste and his wife, Calyste, Sabine,
and I. I will leave Clotilde with her father--"

"It is too soon to sing victory, madame," said Maxime. "I foresee
enormous difficulties; though I shall no doubt vanquish them. Your
esteem and your protection are rewards which would make me commit the
vilest actions, but these will be--"

"The vilest actions!" cried the duchess, interrupting this modern
condottiere, and showing on her countenance as much disgust as
amazement.

"And you would share them, madame, inasmuch as I am only your agent.
But are you ignorant of the degree of blindness to which Madame de
Rochefide has brought your son-in-law? I know it from Canalis and
Nathan, between whom she was hesitating when Calyste threw himself
into the lioness's jaws. Beatrix has contrived to persuade that
serious Breton that she has never loved any one but him; that she is
virtuous; that Conti was merely a sentimental head-love in which
neither the heart nor the rest of it had any part,--a musical love, in
short! As for Rochefide, that was duty. So, you understand, she is
virgin!--a fact she proves by forgetting her son, whom for more than a
year she has not made the slightest attempt to see. The truth is, the
little count will soon be twelve years old, and he finds in Madame
Schontz a mother who is all the more a mother because maternity is, as