“May I expire at your feet if I am not!  Do you want me to sign the oath with my blood?”

“Rise,” she said in a broken voice.  “Have I at last found a man to love me and compensate me for all the abuse that has been showered on my head?  A thousand times I thank you, not for what you are doing for me, but for the balm you pour on my wounded spirit.  Even if you were to say to me now, ‘After all, I am obliged to give you up’ the pleasure of knowing you esteem me would make up for all the rest.  It would be another happy memory to treasure along with my memory of our love, which was ineffaceable, although you so ungratefully suspected me of having deceived you.”

The treasurer appeared fairly intoxicated with joy.  He indulged in a thousand ridiculous extravagances and exaggerations, and declared himself the happiest of men.  Mademoiselle de Guerchi, who was desirous of being prepared for every peril, asked him in a coaxing tone—­

“Who can have put it into your head to be jealous of the commander?  Has he been base enough to boast that I ever gave him my love?”

“No, he never said anything about you; but someway I was afraid.”

She renewed her assurances.  The conversation continued some time in a sentimental tone.  A thousand oaths, a thousand protestations of love were, exchanged.  Jeannin feared that the suddenness of their journey would inconvenience his mistress, and offered to put it off for some days; but to this she would not consent, and it was arranged that the next day at noon a carriage should call at the house and take Angelique out of town to an appointed place at which the treasurer was to join her.

Maitre Quennebert, eye and ear on the alert, had not lost a word of this conversation, and the last proposition of the treasurer changed his ideas.

“Pardieu!” he said to himself, “it looks as if this good man were really going to let himself be taken in and done for.  It is singular how very clear-sighted we can be about things that don’t touch us.  This poor fly is going to let himself be caught by a very clever spider, or I’m much mistaken.  Very likely my widow is quite of my opinion, and yet in what concerns herself she will remain stone-blind.  Well, such is life!  We have only two parts to choose between:  we must be either knave or fool.  What’s Madame Rapally doing, I wonder?”

At this moment he heard a stifled whisper from the opposite corner of the room, but, protected by the distance and the darkness, he let the widow murmur on, and applied his eye once more to his peephole.  What he saw confirmed his opinion.  The damsel was springing up and down, laughing, gesticulating, and congratulating herself on her unexpected good fortune.