or
Beatrix refused to receive me; I intend to pay off that score, and I
will avenge your sister-in-law so cruelly that perhaps she will find
herself too well revenged."

The next day Rochefide told Madame Schontz that Maxime de Trailles was
coming to dinner. That meant notifying her to display all her luxury,
and prepare the choicest food for this connoisseur emeritus, whom all
the women of the Madame Schontz type were in awe of. Madame Schontz
herself thought as much of her toilet as of putting her house in a state
to receive this personage.

In Paris there are as many royalties as there are varieties of art,
mental and moral specialties, sciences, professions; the strongest and
most capable of the men who practise them has a majesty which is all
his own; he is appreciated, respected by his peers, who know the
difficulties of his art or profession, and whose admiration is given
to the man who surmounts them. Maxime was, in the eyes of _rats_ and
courtesans, an extremely powerful and capable man, who had known how to
make himself excessively loved. He was also admired by men who knew how
difficult it is to live in Paris on good terms with creditors; in short,
he had never had any other rival in elegance, deportment, and wit than
the illustrious de Marsay, who frequently employed him on political
missions. All this will suffice to explain his interview with the
duchess, his prestige with Madame Schontz, and the authority of his
words in a conference which he intended to have on the boulevard des
Italiens with a young man already well-known, though lately arrived, in
the Bohemia of Paris.

XXV. A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

The next day, when Maxime de Trailles rose, Finot (whom he had summoned
the night before) was announced. Maxime requested his visitor to
arrange, as if by accident, a breakfast at the cafe Anglais, where
Finot, Couture, and Lousteau should gossip beside him. Finot, whose
position toward the Comte de Trailles was that of a sub-lieutenant
before a marshall of France, could refuse him nothing; it was altogether
too dangerous to annoy that lion. Consequently, when Maxime came to
the breakfast, he found Finot and his two friends at table and the
conversation already started on Madame Schontz, about whom Couture, well
manoeuvred by Finot and Lousteau (Lousteau being, though not aware of
it, Finot's tool), revealed to the Comte de Trailles all that he wanted
to know about her.

About one o'clock, Maxime w