ried Maxime, visibly touched, "if Monsieur
le duc would also deign to treat me with some kindness, I promise you
to make your plan succeed without its costing you very much. But,"
he continued after a pause, "you must take upon yourself to follow my
instructions. This is the last intrigue of my bachelor life; it must
be all the better managed because it concerns a good action," he added,
smiling.

"Follow your instructions!" said the duchess. "Then I must appear in all
this."

"Ah! madame, I will not compromise you," cried Maxime. "I esteem you too
much to demand guarantees. I merely mean that you must follow my advice.
For example, it will be necessary that du Guenic be taken away by his
wife for at least two years; she must show him Switzerland, Italy,
Germany,--in short, all possible countries."

"Ah! you confirm a fear of my director," said the duchess, naively,
remembering the judicious objection of the Abbe Brossette.

Maxime and d'Ajuda could not refrain from smiling at the idea of this
agreement between heaven and hell.

"To prevent Madame de Rochefide from ever seeing Calyste again," she
continued, "we will all travel, Juste and his wife, Calyste, Sabine, and
I. I will leave Clotilde with her father--"

"It is too soon to sing victory, madame," said Maxime. "I foresee
enormous difficulties; though I shall no doubt vanquish them. Your
esteem and your protection are rewards which would make me commit the
vilest actions, but these will be--"

"The vilest actions!" cried the duchess, interrupting this modern
condottiere, and showing on her countenance as much disgust as
amazement.

"And you would share them, madame, inasmuch as I am only your agent. But
are you ignorant of the degree of blindness to which Madame de Rochefide
has brought your son-in-law? I know it from Canalis and Nathan, between
whom she was hesitating when Calyste threw himself into the lioness's
jaws. Beatrix has contrived to persuade that serious Breton that she has
never loved any one but him; that she is virtuous; that Conti was merely
a sentimental head-love in which neither the heart nor the rest of it
had any part,--a musical love, in short! As for Rochefide, that
was duty. So, you understand, she is virgin!--a fact she proves by
forgetting her son, whom for more than a year she has not made the
slightest attempt to see. The truth is, the little count will soon be
twelve years old, and he finds in Madame Schontz a mother who is al