she had
waited upon her that the woman stopped short stupefied.

"We expiate the happiness of ten years in ten minutes," she heard the
duchess say.

"A letter from Havre, madame."

Eleonore read the poet's prose without noticing the presence of
Philoxene, whose amazement became still greater when she saw the dawn
of fresh serenity on the duchess's face as she read further and further
into the letter. Hold out a pole no thicker than a walking-stick to
a drowning man, and he will think it a high-road of safety. The happy
Eleonore believed in Canalis's good faith when she had read through the
four pages in which love and business, falsehood and truth, jostled
each other. She who, a few moments earlier, had sent for her husband
to prevent Melchior's appointment while there was still time, was now
seized with a spirit of generosity that amounted almost to the sublime.

"Poor fellow!" she thought; "he has not had one faithless thought; he
loves me as he did on the first day; he tells me all--Philoxene!"
she cried, noticing her maid, who was standing near and pretending to
arrange the toilet-table.

"Madame la duchesse?"

"A mirror, child!"

Eleonore looked at herself, saw the fine razor-like lines traced on her
brow, which disappeared at a little distance; she sighed, and in that
sigh she felt she bade adieu to love. A brave thought came into her
mind, a manly thought, outside of all the pettiness of women,--a
thought which intoxicates for a moment, and which explains, perhaps,
the clemency of the Semiramis of Russia when she married her young and
beautiful rival to Momonoff.

"Since he has not been faithless, he shall have the girl and her
millions," she thought,--"provided Mademoiselle Mignon is as ugly as he
says she is."

Three raps, circumspectly given, announced the duke, and his wife went
herself to the door to let him in.

"Ah! I see you are better, my dear," he cried, with the counterfeit
joy that courtiers assume so readily, and by which fools are so readily
taken in.

"My dear Henri," she answered, "why is it you have not yet obtained that
appointment for Melchior,--you who sacrificed so much to the king in
taking a ministry which you knew could only last one year."

The duke glanced at Philoxene, who showed him by an almost imperceptible
sign the letter from Havre on the dressing-table.

"You would be terribly bored at Baden and come back at daggers drawn
with Melchior," said the duke.

"Pray w