and shine among the acknowledged beauties?  I give you my word that your peer is not among them, and the leader would be enchanted with you.  Come, suppose a little fatal accident to Monsieur—­may he not suck poison off his paint brush or cut an artery with his sculptor’s chisel?  And, after a sojourn at Bravitz, you might return to Paris a viscountess—­a countess, perhaps, and rule in a pretty court of your own!”

For a woman who had said adieu! she had lingered still listening much too long.  They continued the conversation, turned into this ominous channel, in the same low key.

Cesarine returned home with the sentiment of loneliness which had oppressed her almost utterly removed.  She did not love Gratian, but one need not be a prisoner to understand how admirable the jailer with the outer door-key may appear.  She saw in him a precious friend and ally—­a worshiper who would obey a hint like a fanatic.  Cautiously, at the marchioness’s, and more deeply than at Munich, she made inquiries upon his pecuniary standing and was rejoiced to learn that he had not deceived her in that respect.  It was left to him to be a favorite in the court, which, not succeeding in weaning away the scions of the Legitimist nobility, greeted the foreign nobles cordially and sought to attach them to its standard in foresight of a European war.  One thing was certain:  Gratian had illimitable resources, and the sharp-witted, who had sharp tongues, did not hesitate to aver that he was one of those spoilt children of politics who are fed from State treasuries—­not such a shallow-brain as he pretended.  The new type of diplomatist was like him, the Morny’s, not the effete Metternich’s, gentlemen who settled affairs of the State in the boudoir not in the cabinet.

Brave, gallant, dashing, craftier than his manner indicated, he was destined to play no inconsiderable part in the conflict impending; such an one might emerge from the smoke a lieutenant of an emperor and holding a large slice of territory which neither of the two contestants cared yet to rule.

Compared with a sculptor who had produced nothing—­an architect whose buildings had appeared only on paper—­this young noble was to be run away with, if not to be run after.

The marchioness favored their future and less public meetings, and her gardens were their scene.  But while the relations of the treacherous wife with her cavalier became closer, a singular change took place in him.  Instead of growing bolder, he seemed to hold aloof, and he fixed each new appointment at a longer interval.  He was gloomy and absent, and she began to feel that her charm was weakening.  She reproached him, and tried to find excuses for him.  Everybody knew what he had lost at the races or over the baccarat-board; and she knew, according to a rhymed saying, that “lucky at love is unlucky at gambling.”

“It is not that,” he answered slowly, with an anxious glance around in the green avenues of trimmed trees.  “I do not know why I should speak of politics to a woman; but you and I are as one:  you should know the worst.  I am not my own master, and they who rule me presume to dictate my course as regards my heart.  Brain and sword are theirs, but I shall feel too ignoble a slave if I sacrifice my love for you to la haute politique.”