Saint-Dizier?"

"Yes, sir; the princess continues in good health?"

"Perfectly so. She lives altogether above worldly things."

"And Mademoiselle Adrienne?"

"Alas, my dear sir!" said M. Rodin, with a sigh of deep contrition and
grief.

"Good heaven, sir! has any calamity happened to Mademoiselle Adrienne?"

"In what sense do you mean it?"

"Is she ill?"

"No, no--she is, unfortunately, as well as she is beautiful."

"Unfortunately!" cried the bailiff, in surprise.

"Alas, yes! for when beauty, youth, and health are joined to an evil
spirit of revolt and perversity--to a character which certainly has not
its equal upon earth--it would be far better to be deprived of those
dangerous advantages, which only become so many causes of perdition. But
I conjure you, my dear sir, let us talk of something else: this subject
is too painful," said M. Rodin, with a voice of deep emotion, lifting the
tip of his little finger to the corner of his right eye, as if to stop a
rising tear.

The bailiff did not see the tear, but he saw the gesture, and he was
struck with the change in M. Rodin's voice. He answered him, therefore,
with much sympathy: "Pardon my indiscretion, sir; I really did not
know--"

"It is I who should ask pardon for this involuntary display of
feeling--tears are so rare with old men--but if you had seen, as I have,
the despair of that excellent princess, whose only fault has been too
much kindness, too much weakness, with regard to her niece--by which she
has encouraged her--but, once more, let us talk of something else, my
dear sir!"

After a moment's pause, during which M. Rodin seemed to recover from his
emotion, he said to Dupont: "One part of my mission, my dear sir--that
which relates to the Green Chamber--I have now told you; but there is yet
another. Before coming to it, however, I must remind you of a
circumstance you have perhaps forgotten--namely, that some fifteen or
sixteen years ago, the Marquis d'Aigrigny, then colonel of the hussars in
garrison at Abbeville, spent some time in this house."

"Oh, sir! what a dashing officer was there! It was only just now, that I
was talking about him to my wife. He was the life of the house!--how well
he could perform plays--particularly the character of a scapegrace. In
the Two Edmonds, for instance, he would make you die with laughing, in
that part of a drunken soldier--and then, with what a charming voice he
sang Joconde, sir--better than they co