“Monsieur le chevalier, I assure you, you are mistaken, and—­”

She colored, and did not dare to say more.  The chevalier, with a single glance, had guessed and fathomed her whole plan.

“Yes, yes!  I understand:  you want me to believe it,” he said.  “Well!  I do believe it.  But take my advice:  go to Monsieur du Bousquier.  Haven’t you taken linen there for the last six or eight months?  I’m not asking what went on between you; but I know the man:  he has immense conceit; he is an old bachelor, and very rich; and he only spends a quarter of a comfortable income.  If you are as clever as I suppose, you can go to Paris at his expense.  There, run along, my little doe; go and twist him round your finger.  Only, mind this:  be as supple as silk; at every word take a double turn round him and make a knot.  He is a man to fear scandal, and if he has given you a chance to put him in the pillory—­in short, understand; threaten him with the ladies of the Maternity Hospital.  Besides, he’s ambitious.  A man succeeds through his wife, and you are handsome and clever enough to make the fortune of a husband.  Hey! the mischief! you could hold your own against all the court ladies.”

Suzanne, whose mind took in at a flash the chevalier’s last words, was eager to run off to du Bousquier, but, not wishing to depart too abruptly, she questioned the chevalier about Paris, all the while helping him to dress.  The chevalier, however, divined her desire to be off, and favored it by asking her to tell Cesarine to bring up his chocolate, which Madame Lardot made for him every morning.  Suzanne then slipped away to her new victim, whose biography must here be given.

Born of an old Alencon family, du Bousquier was a cross between the bourgeois and the country squire.  Finding himself without means on the death of his father, he went, like other ruined provincials, to Paris.  On the breaking out of the Revolution he took part in public affairs.  In spite of revolutionary principles, which made a hobby of republican honesty, the management of public business in those days was by no means clean.  A political spy, a stock-jobber, a contractor, a man who confiscated in collusion with the syndic of a commune the property of emigres in order to sell them and buy them in, a minister, and a general were all equally engaged in public business.  From 1793 to 1799 du Bousquier was commissary of provisions to the French armies.  He lived in a magnificent hotel and was one of the matadors of finance, did business with Ouvrard, kept open house, and led the scandalous life of the period,—­the life of a Cincinnatus, on sacks of corn harvested without trouble, stolen rations, “little houses” full of mistresses, in which were given splendid fetes to the Directors of the Republic.