“Why, then,” went on the young man, with a laugh, “if my uncle behaves badly, I, his nephew, will try to make up for his wrong-doing:  he can’t blame me then.  But until then he may be quite easy, as he well knows.”

“Oh yes, and in proof of that I am going to take Moranges with me to-night.  He is young and inexperienced, and it will be a good lesson for him to see how a gallant whose amorous intrigues did not begin yesterday sets about getting even with a coquette.  He can turn it to account later on.

“On my word,” said Jeannin, “my notion is that he is in no great need of a teacher; however, that’s your business, not mine.  Let us return to what we were talking about just now.  Are we agreed; and shall we amuse ourselves by paying out the lady in, her own coin?”

“If you like.”

“Which of us is to begin?”

De Jars struck the table with the handle of his dagger.

“More wine, gentlemen?” said the drawer, running up.

“No, dice; and be quick about it.”

“Three casts each and the highest wins,” said Jeannin.  “You begin.”

“I throw for myself and nephew.”  The dice rolled on the table.

“Ace and three.”

“It’s my turn now.  Six and five.”

“Pass it over.  Five and two.”

“We’re equal.  Four and two.”

“Now let me.  Ace and blank.”

“Double six.”

“You have won.”

“And I’m off at once,” said Jeannin, rising, and muffling himself in his mantle, “It’s now half-past seven.  We shall see each other again at eight, so I won’t say good-bye.”

“Good luck to you!”

Leaving the tavern and turning into the rue Pavee, he took the direction of the river.

CHAPTER II

In 1658, at the corner of the streets Git-le-Coeur and Le Hurepoix (the site of the latter being now occupied by the Quai des Augustins as far as Pont Saint-Michel), stood the great mansion which Francis I had bought and fitted up for the Duchesse d’Etampes.  It was at this period if not in ruins at least beginning to show the ravages of time.  Its rich interior decorations had lost their splendour and become antiquated.  Fashion had taken up its abode in the Marais, near the Place Royale, and it was thither that profligate women and celebrated beauties now enticed the humming swarm of old rakes and young libertines.  Not one of them all would have thought of residing in the mansion, or even in the quarter, wherein the king’s mistress had once dwelt.  It would have been a step downward in the social scale, and equivalent to a confession that their charms were falling in the public estimation.  Still, the old palace was not empty; it had, on the contrary, several tenants.  Like the provinces of Alexander’s empire, its vast suites of rooms had been subdivided; and so neglected was it by the gay world that people of the commonest