“Monsieur le Comte de la Palferine was presented to me ten days ago by Nathan,” she replied; “but you, monsieur, you have known me four years!—­”

“And I am ready, madame,” said Charles-Edouard, “to make the Marquise d’Espard repent to her third generation for being the first to turn away from you.”

“Ah! it was she, was it?” cried Beatrix; “I will make her rue it.”

“To revenge yourself thoroughly,” said the young man in her ear, “you ought to recover your husband; and I am capable of bringing him back to you.”

The conversation, thus begun, went on till two in the morning, without allowing Calyste, whose anger was again and again repressed by a look from Beatrix, to say one word to her in private.  La Palferine, though he did not like Beatrix, showed a superiority of grace, good taste, and cleverness equal to the evident inferiority of Calyste, who wriggled in his chair like a worm cut in two, and actually rose three times as if to box the ears of La Palferine.  The third time that he made a dart forward, the young count said to him, “Are you in pain, monsieur?” in a manner which sent Calyste back to his chair, where he sat as rigid as a mile-stone.

The marquise conversed with the ease of a Celimene, pretending to ignore that Calyste was there.  La Palferine had the cleverness to depart after a brilliant witticism, leaving the two lovers to a quarrel.

Thus, by Maxime’s machinations, the fire of discord flamed in the separate households of Monsieur and of Madame de Rochefide.  The next day, learning the success of this last scene from La Palferine at the Jockey Club, where the young count was playing whist, Maxime went to the hotel Schontz to ascertain with what success Aurelie was rowing her boat.

“My dear,” said Madame Schontz, laughing at Maxime’s expression, “I am at an end of my expedients.  Rochefide is incurable.  I end my career of gallantry by perceiving that cleverness is a misfortune.”

“Explain to me that remark.”

“In the first place, my dear friend, I have kept Arthur for the last week to a regimen of kicks on the shin and perpetual wrangling and jarring; in short, all we have that is most disagreeable in our business.  ‘You are ill,’ he says to me with paternal sweetness, ’for I have been good to you always and I love you to adoration.’  ’You are to blame for one thing, my dear,’ I answered; ‘you bore me.’  ’Well, if I do, haven’t you the wittiest and handsomest young man in Paris to amuse you?’ said the poor man.  I was caught.  I actually felt I loved him.”

“Ah!” said Maxime.

“How could I help it?  Feeling is stronger than we; one can’t resist such things.  So I changed pedals.  I began to entice my judicial wild-boar, now turned like Arthur to a sheep; I gave him Arthur’s sofa.  Heavens! how he bored me.  But, you understand, I had to have Fabien there to let Arthur surprise us.”