or
I have frightened him. I shall easily find a young orphan girl,
interesting and poor, who, taught her lesson by me, will fill the
character of our child so bitterly mourned by Rodolph. I know the
expansiveness, the generosity of his heart,--yes, to give a name, a rank
to her whom he will believe to be his daughter, till now forsaken and
abandoned, he will renew those bonds between us which I believed
indissoluble. The predictions of my nurse will be at length realised,
and I shall thus and then attain the constant aim of my life,--a crown!"

* * * * *

Sarah had scarcely left the notary before M. Charles Robert entered,
after alighting from a very dashing cabriolet. He went like a person on
most intimate terms to the private room of Jacques Ferrand.

The commandant, as Madame Pipelet called him, entered without ceremony
into the notary's cabinet, whom he found in a surly, bilious mood, and
who thus accosted him:

"I reserve the afternoon for my clients; when you wish to speak to me
come in the morning, will you?"

"My dear lawyer" (this was a standing pleasantry of M. Robert), "I have
a very important matter to talk about in the first place, and, in the
next, I was anxious to assure you in person against any alarms you might
have--"

"What alarms?"

"What! Haven't you heard?"

"What?"

"Of my duel--"

"Your duel?"

"With the Duke de Lucenay. Is it possible you have not heard of it?"

"Quite possible."

"Pooh! pooh!"

"But what did you fight about?"

"A very serious matter, which called for bloodshed. Only imagine that,
at a very large party, M. de Lucenay actually said that I had a phlegmy
cough!"

"That you had--"

"A phlegmy cough, my dear lawyer; a complaint which is really most
ridiculously absurd!"

"And did you fight about that?"

"What the devil would you have a man fight about? Can you imagine that a
man could stand calmly and hear himself charged with having a phlegmy
cough? And before a lovely woman, too! Before a little marchioness,
who--who--In a word, I could not stand it!"

"Really!"

"The military men, you see, are always sensitive. My seconds went, the
day before yesterday, to try and obtain some explanation from those of
the duke. I put the matter perfectly straight,--a duel or an ample
apology."

"An ample apology for what?"

"For the phlegmy cough, _pardieu!_--the phlegmy cough that he fastened
on me."

The notary shrugged his shou