alls caused by the pulling of bells to
announce somebody's coming in or going out, like the feverish throbbing
of life in the house of a leader of society. It was well known that
until three o'clock the duke received at the department; that the
duchess, a Swede still benumbed by the snow of Stockholm, had hardly
emerged from behind her somnolent bed-curtains; so that no one came,
neither callers nor petitioners, and the footmen, perched like
flamingoes on the steps of the deserted stoop, alone enlivened the scene
with the slim shadows of their long legs and the yawning ennui of their
idleness.

It happened however, on that day, that Jenkins' maroon-lined _coupe_ was
waiting in a corner of the courtyard. The duke, who had been feeling
badly the day before, felt still worse when he left the breakfast table,
and lost no time in sending for the man of the pearls in order to
question him concerning his singular condition. He had no pain anywhere,
slept well and had his usual appetite; but there was a most
extraordinary sensation of weariness and of terrible cold, which nothing
could overcome. So it was that, at that moment, notwithstanding the
lovely spring sunshine which flooded his room and put to shame the flame
blazing on his hearth as in the depth of winter, the duke was shivering
in his blue firs, between his little screens, and as he wrote his name
on divers documents for a clerk from his office, on a low lacquered
table that stood so near the fire that the lacquer came off in scales,
he kept holding his benumbed fingers to the blaze, which might have
scorched them on the surface without restoring circulation and life to
their bloodless rigidity.

Was it anxiety caused by the indisposition of his illustrious patient?
At all events Jenkins seemed nervous, excited, strode up and down the
room, prying and sniffing to right and left, trying to find in the air
something that he believed to be there, something subtle and intangible,
like the faint trace of a perfume or the invisible mark left by a
passing bird. He could hear the wood snapping on the hearth, the sound
of papers hastily turned, the duke's indolent voice, indicating in a
word or two, always concise and clear, the answer to a letter of four
pages, and the clerk's respectful monosyllables: "Yes, Monsieur le
Ministre." "No, Monsieur le Ministre." Outside, the swallows whistled
merrily over the water, and some one was playing a clarinet in the
direction of the b