trying to play off on me doesn't
surprise me one bit; I expected it. You are flinging the scabbard
after the sword, and that's daring for a girl. It takes nerve and
superior ideas to do it, my angel, and therefore you have won my
respectful esteem."

"Monsieur le chevalier, I assure you, you are mistaken, and--"

She colored, and did not dare to say more. The chevalier, with a
single glance, had guessed and fathomed her whole plan.

"Yes, yes! I understand: you want me to believe it," he said. "Well! I
do believe it. But take my advice: go to Monsieur du Bousquier.
Haven't you taken linen there for the last six or eight months? I'm
not asking what went on between you; but I know the man: he has
immense conceit; he is an old bachelor, and very rich; and he only
spends a quarter of a comfortable income. If you are as clever as I
suppose, you can go to Paris at his expense. There, run along, my
little doe; go and twist him round your finger. Only, mind this: be as
supple as silk; at every word take a double turn round him and make a
knot. He is a man to fear scandal, and if he has given you a chance to
put him in the pillory--in short, understand; threaten him with the
ladies of the Maternity Hospital. Besides, he's ambitious. A man
succeeds through his wife, and you are handsome and clever enough to
make the fortune of a husband. Hey! the mischief! you could hold your
own against all the court ladies."

Suzanne, whose mind took in at a flash the chevalier's last words, was
eager to run off to du Bousquier, but, not wishing to depart too
abruptly, she questioned the chevalier about Paris, all the while
helping him to dress. The chevalier, however, divined her desire to be
off, and favored it by asking her to tell Cesarine to bring up his
chocolate, which Madame Lardot made for him every morning. Suzanne
then slipped away to her new victim, whose biography must here be
given.

Born of an old Alencon family, du Bousquier was a cross between the
bourgeois and the country squire. Finding himself without means on the
death of his father, he went, like other ruined provincials, to Paris.
On the breaking out of the Revolution he took part in public affairs.
In spite of revolutionary principles, which made a hobby of republican
honesty, the management of public business in those days was by no
means clean. A political spy, a stock-jobber, a contractor, a man who
confiscated in collusion with the syndic of a commune the prope