Hedwig shook her head; without flattery, well as her mistress assumed the air of languor, her figure had not been affected by any event since the slaying of the Viscount Gratian, and her countenance was unmarred by any change except a trifling pallor.

“Yes; after my uncle grew better, I was indisposed and should have died but for the cares of an old friend, Madame Lesperon the Female Bard.  But you would not know this favorite of the Muses.  You are not poetically inclined, Hedwig!” she added, laughingly.  Rising with animation, “but that makes no matter!  I am glad to see you home again.  I thought of you, Hedwig, and I have bought you something pretty to wear on your days out—­bought it in Paris, too.”

“Is that so?” exclaimed the girl, much less absent and saucy in the curl of her lip; “you are always kind.”

“Yes; they are in my new trunk, for which you had better send the gardener at once.  He is not forgotten either.  There is a set of jewelry, too, in the old Teutonic style.  They say now in Paris that any idea of war between France and Prussia is absurd, and there is a revulsion in feeling—­the vogue is all for German things.  I am not sorry that I know how to dress in their style, and I have some genuine Rhenish jewelry, which become me very well.”

“I see that madame has indeed not altered,” remarked Hedwig, plentifully adorned with smiles, as the sunshine streamed into the grave apartment.  “You have fresh projects of captivating the men!” Cesarine smiled also, and nodded several times.

“Here?” cried the girl, in surprise.

“Certainly here, since I understand you are receiving company in shoals.”

“That is all over now, madame, and I am sorry, for the callers were very generous to me.  It appears that the War Ministry do not approve of strangers running about Montmorency and into the abode of the great inventor of ordinances—­”

“Ordnance, child,” corrected Madame Clemenceau.

“And the house is sealed up, as you found it, against all comers.  We have nobody here for you to try graces upon except Mademoiselle Rebecca’s papa—­and he being a Jew, you must not go near him, fresh from the confessional.”

Madame Clemenceau seemed to be musing.

“I forgot—­there’s young M. Antonino,” continued the servant.

Cesarine made a contemptuous gesture, expressive of the conquest being too easy.

“Such sallow youth are best left to platonic love, it’s more proper, and to them, quite as entertaining.”

“Well, madame,” said Hedwig, like a cheap Jack, holding up the last of his stock, “they are the only men I can offer you; for, since we have been firing off guns and cannon, our neighbors have moved away right and left—­we are so lonely.  No servant would stay a week!”

“Those the only men?” said the returned fugitive; “Hedwig, this is not polite for your master.”

“Oh, madame, a husband never counts.”