making a Comtesse Maxime."

"Oh, how I should like to see her!" exclaimed Madame Schontz. "But
permit me to present to you Monsieur Claude Vignon--Monsieur Claude
Vignon, Monsieur de Trailles."

"Ah, so you are the man who allowed Camille Maupin, the innkeeper of
literature, to go into a convent?" cried Maxime. "After you, God. I
never received such an honor. Mademoiselle des Touches treated you,
monsieur, as though you were Louis XIV."

"That is how history is written!" replied Claude Vignon. "Don't you
know that her fortune was used to free the Baron du Guenic's estates?
Ah! if she only knew that Calyste now belongs to her ex-friend,"
(Maxime pushed the critic's foot, motioning to Rochefide), "she would
issue from her convent, I do believe, to tear him from her."

"Upon my word, Rochefide, if I were you," said Maxime, finding that
his warning did not stop Vignon, "I should give back my wife's
fortune, so that the world couldn't say she attached herself to
Calyste from necessity."

"Maxime is right," remarked Madame Schontz, looking at Arthur, who
colored high. "If I have helped you to gain several thousand francs a
year, you couldn't better employ them. I shall have made the happiness
of husband /and/ wife; what a feather in my cap!"

"I never thought of it," replied the marquis; "but a man should be a
gentleman before he's a husband."