a messenger appeared.

"Send the lieutenant-general," said Dubois.

"But, abbe, it seems to me that it is you who give orders here now."

"It is for your good, monseigneur.--Let me do it."

"Well, well!" said the regent, "one must be indulgent to new-comers."

Messire Voyer d'Argenson entered--he was as ugly as Dubois, but his
ugliness was of a very different kind. He was tall, thick, and heavy;
wore an immense wig, had great bushy eyebrows, and was invariably taken
for the devil by children who saw him for the first time. But with all
this, he was supple, active, skillful, intriguing, and fulfilled his
office conscientiously, when he was not turned from his nocturnal duties
by other occupations.

"Messire d'Argenson," said Dubois, without even leaving the
lieutenant-general time to finish his bow, "monseigneur, who has no
secrets from me, has sent for you, that you may tell me in what costume
he went out last night, in whose house he passed the evening, and what
happened to him on leaving it. I should not need to ask these questions
if I had not just arrived from London; you understand, that as I
traveled post from Calais, I can know nothing of them."

"But," said D'Argenson, who thought these questions concealed some
snare, "did anything extraordinary happen last evening? I confess I
received no report; I hope no accident happened to monseigneur?"

"Oh, no, none; only monseigneur, who went out at eight o'clock in the
evening, as a French guard, to sup with Madame de Sabran, was nearly
carried off on leaving her house."

"Carried off!" cried D'Argenson, turning pale, while the regent could
not restrain a cry of astonishment, "carried off! and by whom?"

"Ah!" said Dubois, "that is what we do not know, and what you ought to
know, Messire d'Argenson, if you had not passed your time at the convent
of the Madeleine de Traisnel."

"What, D'Argenson! you, a great magistrate, give such an example!" said
the regent, laughing. "Never mind, I will receive you well, if you come,
as you have already done in the time of the late king, to bring me, at
the end of the year, a journal of my acts."

"Monseigneur," said the lieutenant, stammering, "I hope your highness
does not believe a word of what the Abbe Dubois says."

"What! instead of being humiliated by your ignorance, you give me the
lie. Monseigneur, I will take you to D'Argenson's seraglio; an abbess of
twenty-six, and novices of fifteen; a boudoir in India chint