“On Sunday we are to dine with M. Graff, the flute’s father-in-law.”

“Very well, on Saturday.  Between now and then you will have time to reassure a little girl who has shed tears already over her fault.  God asks no more than repentance; you will not be more severe than the Eternal father with poor little Cecile?—­”

Pons, thus reached on his weak side, again plunged into formulas more than polite, and went as far as the stairhead with the President.

An hour later the President’s servants arrived in a troop on poor Pons’ second floor.  They behaved after the manner of their kind; they cringed and fawned; they wept.  Madeleine took M. Pons aside and flung herself resolutely at his feet.

“It is all my fault; and monsieur knows quite well that I love him,” here she burst into tears.  “It was vengeance boiling in my veins; monsieur ought to throw all the blame of the unhappy affair on that.  We are all to lose our pensions. . . .  Monsieur, I was mad, and I would not have the rest suffer for my fault. . . .  I can see now well enough that fate did not make me for monsieur.  I have come to my senses, I aimed too high, but I love you still, monsieur.  These ten years I have thought of nothing but the happiness of making you happy and looking after things here.  What a lot! . . .  Oh! if monsieur but knew how much I love him!  But monsieur must have seen it through all my mischief-making.  If I were to die to-morrow, what would they find?  —­A will in your favor, monsieur. . . .  Yes, monsieur, in my trunk under my best things.”

Madeleine had set a responsive chord vibrating; the passion inspired in another may be unwelcome, but it will always be gratifying to self-love; this was the case with the old bachelor.  After generously pardoning Madeleine, he extended his forgiveness to the other servants, promising to use his influence with his cousin the Presidente on their behalf.

It was unspeakably pleasant to Pons to find all his old enjoyments restored to him without any loss of self-respect.  The world had come to Pons, he had risen in the esteem of his circle; but Schmucke looked so downcast and dubious when he heard the story of the triumph, that Pons felt hurt.  When, however, the kind-hearted German saw the sudden change wrought in Pons’ face, he ended by rejoicing with his friend, and made a sacrifice of the happiness that he had known during those four months that he had had Pons all to himself.  Mental suffering has this immense advantage over physical ills—­when the cause is removed it ceases at once.  Pons was not like the same man that morning.  The old man, depressed and visibly failing, had given place to the serenely contented Pons, who entered the Presidente’s house that October afternoon with the Marquise de Pompadour’s fan in his pocket.  Schmucke, on the other hand, pondered deeply over this phenomenon, and could not understand it; your true stoic never can understand the courtier that dwells in a Frenchman.  Pons was a born Frenchman of the Empire; a mixture of eighteenth century gallantry and that devotion to womankind so often celebrated in songs of the type of Partant pour la Syrie.