“And you will be well rewarded, my friend,” said Mme. de Bargeton, with a gracious smile.  “Go to the Chancellerie the day after to-morrow with ‘the Heron’ and des Lupeaulx, and you will find your patent signed by His Majesty.  The Keeper of the Seals will take it to-morrow to the Tuileries, but there is to be a meeting of the Council, and he will not come back till late.  Still, if I hear the result to-morrow evening, I will let you know.  Where are you living?”

“I will come to you,” said Lucien, ashamed to confess that he was living in the Rue de la Lune.

“The Duc de Lenoncourt and the Duc de Navarreins have made mention of you to the King,” added the Marquise; “they praised your absolute and entire devotion, and said that some distinction ought to avenge your treatment in the Liberal press.  The name and title of Rubempre, to which you have a claim through your mother, would become illustrious through you, they said.  The King gave his lordship instructions that evening to prepare a patent authorizing the Sieur Lucien Chardon to bear the arms and title of the Comtes de Rubempre, as grandson of the last Count by the mother’s side.  ‘Let us favor the songsters’ (chardonnerets) ‘of Pindus,’ said his Majesty, after reading your sonnet on the Lily, which my cousin luckily remembered to give the Duke.—­’Especially when the King can work miracles, and change the song-bird into an eagle,’ M. de Navarreins replied.”

Lucien’s expansion of feeling would have softened the heart of any woman less deeply wounded than Louise d’Espard de Negrepelisse; but her thirst for vengeance was only increased by Lucien’s graciousness.  Des Lupeaulx was right; Lucien was wanting in tact.  It never crossed his mind that this history of the patent was one of the mystifications at which Mme. d’Espard was an adept.  Emboldened with success and the flattering distinction shown to him by Mlle. des Touches, he stayed till two o’clock in the morning for a word in private with his hostess.  Lucien had learned in Royalist newspaper offices that Mlle. des Touches was the author of a play in which La petite Fay, the marvel of the moment was about to appear.  As the rooms emptied, he drew Mlle. des Touches to a sofa in the boudoir, and told the story of Coralie’s misfortune and his own so touchingly, that Mlle. des Touches promised to give the heroine’s part to his friend.

That promise put new life into Coralie.  But the next day, as they breakfasted together, Lucien opened Lousteau’s newspaper, and found that unlucky anecdote of the Keeper of the Seals and his wife.  The story was full of the blackest malice lurking in the most caustic wit.  Louis XVIII. was brought into the story in a masterly fashion, and held up to ridicule in such a way that prosecution was impossible.  Here is the substance of a fiction for which the Liberal party attempted to win credence, though they only succeeded in adding one more to the tale of their ingenious calumnies.