meanest
insult."

"Well, then--if I were to attempt, merely to attempt, to ask the
Prince for a place for Marneffe, I should be done for, and Marneffe
would be turned out."

"I thought that you and the Prince were such intimate friends."

"We are, and he has amply proved it; but, my child, there is authority
above the Marshal's--for instance, the whole Council of Ministers.
With time and a little tacking, we shall get there. But, to succeed, I
must wait till the moment when some service is required of me. Then I
can say one good turn deserves another--"

"If I tell Marneffe this tale, my poor Hector, he will play us some
mean trick. You must tell him yourself that he has to wait. I will not
undertake to do so. Oh! I know what my fate would be. He knows how to
punish me! He will henceforth share my room----

"Do not forget to settle the twelve hundred francs a year on the
little one!"

Hulot, seeing his pleasures in danger, took Monsieur Marneffe aside,
and for the first time derogated from the haughty tone he had always
assumed towards him, so greatly was he horrified by the thought of
that half-dead creature in his pretty young wife's bedroom.

"Marneffe, my dear fellow," said he, "I have been talking of you
to-day. But you cannot be promoted to the first class just yet. We
must have time."

"I will be, Monsieur le Baron," said Marneffe shortly.

"But, my dear fellow--"

"I _will_ be, Monsieur le Baron," Marneffe coldly repeated, looking
alternately at the Baron and at Valerie. "You have placed my wife in a
position that necessitates her making up her differences with me, and
I mean to keep her; for, _my dear fellow_, she is a charming
creature," he added, with crushing irony. "I am master here--more than
you are at the War Office."

The Baron felt one of those pangs of fury which have the effect, in
the heart, of a fit of raging toothache, and he could hardly conceal
the tears in his eyes.

During this little scene, Valerie had been explaining Marneffe's
imaginary determination to Montes, and thus had rid herself of him for
a time.

Of her four adherents, Crevel alone was exempted from the rule
--Crevel, the master of the little "bijou" apartment; and he displayed
on his countenance an air of really insolent beatitude,
notwithstanding the wordless reproofs administered by Valerie in
frowns and meaning grimaces. His triumphant paternity beamed in every
feature.

When Valerie was whispering a word