All the women had gone to the windows to see the new wonder get out of the royal carriage, attended by her three suitors.

“Do not let us seem so curious,” Madame de Chaulieu had said, cut to the heart by Diane’s exclamation,—­“She is divine! where in the world does she come from?”—­and with that the bevy flew back to their seats, resuming their composure, though Eleonore’s heart was full of hungry vipers all clamorous for a meal.

Mademoiselle d’Herouville said in a low voice and with much meaning to the Duchesse de Verneuil, “Eleonore receives her Melchior very ungraciously.”

“The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse thinks there is a coolness between them,” said Laure de Verneuil, with simplicity.

Charming phrase! so often used in the world of society,—­how the north wind blows through it.

“Why so?” asked Modeste of the pretty young girl who had lately left the Sacre-Coeur.

“The great poet,” said the pious duchess—­making a sign to her daughter to be silent—­“left Madame de Chaulieu without a letter for more than two weeks after he went to Havre, having told her that he went there for his health—­”

Modeste made a hasty movement, which caught the attention of Laure, Helene, and Mademoiselle d’Herouville.

“—­and during that time,” continued the devout duchess, “she was endeavoring to have him appointed commander of the Legion of honor, and minister at Baden.”

“Oh, that was shameful in Canalis; he owes everything to her,” exclaimed Mademoiselle d’Herouville.

“Why did not Madame de Chaulieu come to Havre?” asked Modeste of Helene, innocently.

“My dear,” said the Duchesse de Verneuil, “she would let herself be cut in little pieces without saying a word.  Look at her,—­she is regal; her head would smile, like Mary Stuart’s, after it was cut off; in fact, she has some of that blood in her veins.”

“Did she not write to him?” asked Modeste.

“Diane tells me,” answered the duchess, prompted by a nudge from Mademoiselle d’Herouville, “that in answer to Canalis’s first letter she made a cutting reply a few days ago.”

This explanation made Modeste blush with shame for the man before her; she longed, not to crush him under her feet, but to revenge herself by one of those malicious acts that are sharper than a dagger’s thrust.  She looked haughtily at the Duchesse de Chaulieu—­

“Monsieur Melchior!” she said.

All the women snuffed the air and looked alternately at the duchess, who was talking in an undertone to Canalis over the embroidery-frame, and then at the young girl so ill brought up as to disturb a lovers’ meeting,—­a think not permissible in any society.  Diane de Maufrigneuse nodded, however, as much as to say, “The child is in the right of it.”  All the women ended by smiling at each other; they were enraged with a woman who was fifty-six years old and still handsome enough to put her fingers into the treasury and steal the dues of youth.  Melchior looked at Modeste with feverish impatience, and made the gesture of a master to a valet, while the duchess lowered her head with the movement of a lioness disturbed at a meal; her eyes, fastened on the canvas, emitted red flames in the direction of the poet, which stabbed like epigrams, for each word revealed to her a triple insult.