The result of all this was, that when the Marquis de Courtornieu’s report reached Paris, it was answered by a decree depriving him of the office of grand prevot.

This unexpected blow crushed him.

To think that a man as shrewd, as subtle-minded, as quick-witted, and adroit as himself—­a man who had passed through so many troubled epochs, who had served with the same obsequious countenance all the masters who would accept his services—­to think that such a man should have been thus duped and betrayed!

“It must be that old imbecile, the Duc de Sairmeuse, who has manoeuvred so skilfully, and with so much address,” he said.  “But who advised him?  I cannot imagine who it could have been.”

Who it was Mme. Blanche knew only too well.

She recognized Martial’s hand in all this, as Marie-Anne had done.

“Ah!  I was not deceived in him,” she thought; “he is the great diplomatist I believed him to be.  At his age to outwit my father, an old politician of such experience and acknowledged astuteness!  And he does all this to please Marie-Anne,” she continued, frantic with rage.  “It is the first step toward obtaining pardon for the friends of that vile creature.  She has unbounded influence over him, and so long as she lives there is no hope for me.  But, patience.”

She was patient, realizing that he who wishes to surely attain his revenge must wait, dissimulate, prepare an opportunity, but not force it.

What her revenge should be she had not yet decided; but she already had her eye upon a man whom she believed would be a willing instrument in her hands, and capable of doing anything for money.

But how had such a man chanced to cross the path of Mme. Blanche?  How did it happen that she was cognizant of the existence of such a person?

It was the result of one of those simple combinations of circumstances which go by the name of chance.

Burdened with remorse, despised and jeered at, and stoned whenever he showed himself upon the street, and horror-stricken whenever he thought of the terrible threats of Balstain, the Piedmontese innkeeper, Chupin left Montaignac and came to beg an asylum at the Chateau de Sairmeuse.

In his ignorance, he thought that the grand seigneur who had employed him, and who had profited by his treason, owed him, over and above the promised reward, aid and protection.

But the servants shunned him.  They would not allow him a seat at the kitchen-table, nor would the grooms allow him to sleep in the stables.  They threw him a bone, as they would have thrown it to a dog; and he slept where he could.

He bore all this uncomplainingly, deeming himself fortunate in being able to purchase comparative safety at such a price.

But when the duke returned from Paris with a policy of forgetfulness and conciliation in his pocket, he would no longer tolerate the presence of this man, who was the object of universal execration.