“Mrs. Scott!” cried Paul de Lavardens.

“You know her?” asked Madame de Lavardens.

“Do I know her?—­do I—­not at all.  But I was at a ball at her house six weeks ago.”

“At a ball at her house! and you don’t know her!  What sort of woman is she, then?”

“Charming, delightful, ideal, a miracle!”

“And is there a Mr. Scott?”

“Certainly, a tall, fair man.  He was at his ball.  They pointed him out to me.  He bowed at random right and left.  He was not much amused, I will answer for it.  He looked at us as if he were thinking, ’Who are all these people?  What are they doing at my house?’ We went to see Mrs. Scott and Miss Percival, her sister.  And certainly it was well worth the trouble.”

“These Scotts,” said Madame de Lavardens, addressing M. de Larnac, “do you know who they are?”

“Yes, Madame, I know.  Mr. Scott is an American, possessing a colossal fortune, who settled himself in Paris last year.  As soon as their name was mentioned, I understood that the victory had never been doubtful.  Gallard was beaten beforehand.  The Scotts began by buying a house in Paris for 2,000,000 francs, it is near the Parc Monceau.”

“Yes, Rue Murillo,” said Paul; “I tell you I went to a ball there.  It was—­”

“Let Monsieur de Larnac speak.  You can tell us presently about the ball at Mrs. Scott’s.”

“Well, now, imagine my Americans established in Paris,” continued M. de Larnac, “and the showers of gold begun.  In the orthodox parvenu style they amuse themselves with throwing handfuls of gold out of window.  Their great wealth is quite recent, they say; ten years ago Mrs. Scott begged in the streets of New York.”

“Begged!”

“They say so.  Then she married this Scott, the son of a New York banker, and all at once a successful lawsuit put into their hands not millions, but tens of millions.  Somewhere in America they have a silver mine, but a genuine mine, a real mine—­a mine with silver in it.  Ah! we shall see what luxury will reign at Longueval!  We shall all look like paupers beside them!  It is said that they have 100,000 francs a day to spend.”

“Such are our neighbors!” cried Madame de Lavardens.  “An adventuress! and that is the least of it—­a heretic, Monsieur l’Abbe, a Protestant!”

A heretic! a Protestant!  Poor Cure; it was indeed that of which he had immediately thought on hearing the words, “An American, Mrs. Scott.”  The new chatelaine of Longueval would not go to mass.  What did it matter to him that she had been a beggar?  What did it matter to him if she possessed tens and tens of millions?  She was not a Catholic.  He would never again baptize children born at Longueval, and the chapel in the castle, where he had so often said mass, would be transformed into a Protestant oratory, which would echo only the frigid utterances of a Calvinistic or Lutheran pastor.

Every one was distressed, disappointed, overwhelmed; but in the midst of the general depression Paul stood radiant.