anxious as I?  Your letter arrived a trifle late; I had already seen the banker.  You are a child, Melchior, and you are playing tricks with us.  It is not right.  The duke himself is quite indignant at your proceedings; he thinks you less than a gentleman, which casts some reflections on your mother’s honor.

Now, I intend to see things for myself.  I shall, I believe, have the honor of accompanying Madame to the hunt which the Duc d’Herouville proposes to give for Mademoiselle de La Bastie.  I will manage to have you invited to Rosembray, for the meet will probably take place in Duc de Verneuil’s park.

  Pray believe, my dear poet, that I am none the less, for life,

Your friend, Eleonore de M.

“There, Ernest, just look at that!” cried Canalis, tossing the letter at Ernest’s nose across the breakfast-table; “that’s the two thousandth love-letter I have had from that woman, and there isn’t even a ‘thou’ in it.  The illustrious Eleonore has never compromised herself more than she does there.  Marry, and try your luck!  The worst marriage in the world is better than this sort of halter.  Ah, I am the greatest Nicodemus that ever tumbled out of the moon!  Modeste has millions, and I’ve lost her; for we can’t get back from the poles, where we are to-day, to the tropics, where we were three days ago!  Well, I am all the more anxious for your triumph over the grand equerry, because I told the duchess I came here only for your sake; and so I shall do my best for you.”

“Alas, Melchior, Modeste must needs have so noble, so grand, so well-balanced a nature to resist the glories of the Court, and all these splendors cleverly displayed for her honor and glory by the duke, that I cannot believe in the existence of such perfection,—­and yet, if she is still the Modeste of her letters, there might be hope!”

“Well, well, you are a happy fellow, you young Boniface, to see the world and your mistress through green spectacles!” cried Canalis, marching off to pace up and down the garden.

Caught between two lies, the poet was at a loss what to do.

“Play by rule, and you lose!” he cried presently, sitting down in the kiosk.  “Every man of sense would have acted as I did four days ago, and got himself out of the net in which I saw myself.  At such times people don’t disentangle nets, they break through them!  Come, let us be calm, cold, dignified, affronted.  Honor requires it; English stiffness is the only way to win her back.  After all, if I have to retire finally, I can always fall back on my old happiness; a fidelity of ten years can’t go unrewarded.  Eleonore will arrange me some good marriage.”

CHAPTER XXVI

TRUE LOVE