Marquis de
Senneval's, the marquise, a regular she-devil--"

"My dear Edwards," interrupted M. Boyer, "you should learn the alliances
of our great families before you speak, or you will sadly blunder."

"How?"

"Madame la Marquise de Senneval is sister of M. le Duc de Montbrison,
into whose establishment you wish to enter."

"Ah, the devil!"

"Judge of the effect if you had spoken thus of her before tattling
people! You would not have remained in the house twenty-four hours."

"True, Boyer; I must endeavour to 'get up' my peerage."

"I resume. The father of M. le Vicomte discovered, after twelve or
fifteen years of a marriage very happy until then, that he had this
Polish count to complain of. Fortunately, or unfortunately, M. le
Vicomte was born nine months after his father, or rather M. le Comte de
Saint-Remy, had returned from this unpropitious journey, so that he
could not be certain, in spite of the greatest probabilities, whether or
not M. le Vicomte could fairly charge him with paternity. However, the
comte separated instantly from his wife, would not touch a stiver of the
fortune she had brought him, and returned into the country with about
eighty thousand francs which he possessed of his own. But you have yet
to learn the rancour of this diabolical character. Although the outrage
had been perpetrated fifteen years when he detected it, the father of M.
le Vicomte, accompanied by M. de Fermont, one of his relatives, sought
out this Polonese seducer, and found him at Venice, after having sought
for him during eighteen months in every city in Europe."

"What determination!"

"A demon's rancour, I say, my dear Edwards! At Venice there was a
ferocious duel, in which the Pole was killed. All passed off honourably;
but they tell me that, when the father of M. le Vicomte saw the Pole
fall at his feet mortally wounded, he exhibited such ferocious joy that
his relative, M. de Fermont, was obliged to take him away from the place
of combat; the comte wishing, as he declared, to see his enemy die
before his eyes."

"What a man! What a man!"

"The comte returned to Paris, saw his wife, told her he had killed the
Pole, and went back into the country. Since that time he never saw her
or her son, and resided at Angers, where he lived, as they say, like a
regular old wolf, with what was left of his eighty thousand francs,
which had been sweated down not a little, as you may suppose, by his
chase after the Pole. At A