“Unless she may be classed between the oyster and head-clerk of an office, the two creatures nearest to marble in the zoological kingdom, it is impossible to discern in Olympia—­” Bianchon began.

“A woman of thirty,” Madame de la Baudraye hastily interposed, fearing some all too medical term.

“Then Adolphe must be two-and-twenty,” the doctor went on, “for an Italian woman at thirty is equivalent to a Parisian of forty.”

“From these two facts, the romance may easily be reconstructed,” said Lousteau.  “And this Cavaliere Paluzzi—­what a man!—­The style is weak in these two passages; the author was perhaps a clerk in the Excise Office, and wrote the novel to pay his tailor!”

“In his time,” said Bianchon, “the censor flourished; you must show as much indulgence to a man who underwent the ordeal by scissors in 1805 as to those who went to the scaffold in 1793.”

“Do you understand in the least?” asked Madame Gorju timidly of Madame de Clagny.

The Public Prosecutor’s wife, who, to use a phrase of Monsieur Gravier’s, might have put a Cossack to flight in 1814, straightened herself in her chair like a horseman in his stirrups, and made a face at her neighbor, conveying, “They are looking at us; we must smile as if we understood.”

“Charming!” said the Mayoress to Gatien.  “Pray go on, Monsieur Lousteau.”

Lousteau looked at the two women, two Indian idols, and contrived to keep his countenance.  He thought it desirable to say, “Attention!” before going on as follows:—­

          OR ROMAN REVENGE 209

  dress rustled in the silence.  Sud-
  denly Cardinal Borborigano stood
  before the Duchess.

  “His face was gloomy, his brow
  was dark with clouds, and a bitter
  smile lurked in his wrinkles.

“Madame,” said he, “you are under suspicion.  If you are guilty, fly.  If you are not, still fly; because, whether criminal or innocent, you will find it easier to defend yourself from a distance.”

“I thank your Eminence for your solicitude,” said she.  “The Duke of Bracciano will reappear when I find it needful to prove that he is alive.”

“Cardinal Borborigano!” exclaimed Bianchon.  “By the Pope’s keys!  If you do not agree with me that there is a magnificent creation in the very name, if at those words dress rustled in the silence you do not feel all the poetry thrown into the part of Schedoni by Mrs. Radcliffe in The Black Penitent, you do not deserve to read a romance.”

“For my part,” said Dinah, who had some pity on the eighteen faces gazing up at Lousteau, “I see how the story is progressing.  I know it all.  I am in Rome; I can see the body of a murdered husband whose wife, as bold as she is wicked, has made her bed on the crater of a volcano.  Every night, at every kiss, she says to herself, ’All will be discovered!’”