have no desire to alarm you beyond measure
concerning your weak state, but it is my duty--"

Mora smiled, a charming, mischievous smile.

"Your duty and my pleasure are two, my good fellow. Let me burn my life
at both ends if it amuses me. I have never had such a fine opportunity
as I have now."

He started.

"The duchess!"

A door under the hangings had opened, giving passage to a dishevelled
little head of fair hair, like a mass of vapor amid the laces and
furbelows of a royal _deshabille_.

"What is this I hear? You haven't gone out? Pray scold him, Doctor.
Isn't he foolish to listen to his own fears so much? Just look at him.
He looks in superb health."

"There! You see," said the duke, with a laugh, to the Irishman. "Aren't
you coming in, Duchess?"

"No, I am going to take you away, on the contrary. My uncle d'Estaing
has sent me a cage filled with birds from the Indies. I want to show
them to you. Marvels of all colors, with little eyes like black pearls.
And so cold, so cold, almost as sensitive to cold as you are."

"Let us go and see them," said the minister. "Wait for me, Jenkins; I
will come back."

Then, realizing that he still had his letter in his hand, he tossed it
carelessly into the drawer of the little table on which he had been
signing documents, and went out behind the duchess, with the perfect
_sang-froid_ of a husband accustomed to such manoeuvres. What
marvellously skilful workman, what incomparable maker of toys was able
to endow the human countenance with its flexibility, its wonderful
elasticity? Nothing could be prettier than that great nobleman's face,
surprised with his adultery on his lips, the cheeks inflamed by the
vision of promised delights, and suddenly assuming a serene expression
of conjugal affection; nothing could be finer than the hypocritical
humility of Jenkins, his paternal smile in the duchess's presence,
giving place instantly when he was left alone, to a savage expression of
wrath and hatred, a criminal pallor, the pallor of a Castaing or a
Lapommerais devising his sinister schemes.

A swift glance at each of the doors, and in a twinkling he stood before
the drawer filled with valuable papers, in which the little gold key was
allowed to remain with an insolent negligence that seemed to say:

"No one will dare."

But Jenkins dared.

The letter was there, on top of a pile of others. The texture of the
paper, the three words of the address dashed off in a pl