punctual. Is the countess up
yet?"

"If you wish, I will inquire."

"Yes, ask her for one of her liqueur cellarets, mine is incomplete; and
tell her I shall have the honor of seeing her about three o'clock, and
that I request permission to introduce some one to her." The valet left
the room. Albert threw himself on the divan, tore off the cover of two
or three of the papers, looked at the theatre announcements, made a face
seeing they gave an opera, and not a ballet; hunted vainly amongst the
advertisements for a new tooth-powder of which he had heard, and threw
down, one after the other, the three leading papers of Paris, muttering,
"These papers become more and more stupid every day." A moment after,
a carriage stopped before the door, and the servant announced M. Lucien
Debray. A tall young man, with light hair, clear gray eyes, and thin
and compressed lips, dressed in a blue coat with beautifully carved gold
buttons, a white neckcloth, and a tortoiseshell eye-glass suspended by a
silken thread, and which, by an effort of the superciliary and zygomatic
muscles, he fixed in his eye, entered, with a half-official air, without
smiling or speaking. "Good-morning, Lucien, good-morning," said Albert;
"your punctuality really alarms me. What do I say? punctuality! You,
whom I expected last, you arrive at five minutes to ten, when the time
fixed was half-past! Has the ministry resigned?"

"No, my dear fellow," returned the young man, seating himself on the
divan; "reassure yourself; we are tottering always, but we never fall,
and I begin to believe that we shall pass into a state of immobility,
and then the affairs of the Peninsula will completely consolidate us."

"Ah, true; you drive Don Carlos out of Spain."

"No, no, my dear fellow, do not confound our plans. We take him to
the other side of the French frontier, and offer him hospitality at
Bourges."

"At Bourges?"

"Yes, he has not much to complain of; Bourges is the capital of Charles
VII. Do you not know that all Paris knew it yesterday, and the day
before it had already transpired on the Bourse, and M. Danglars (I do
not know by what means that man contrives to obtain intelligence as soon
as we do) made a million!"

"And you another order, for I see you have a blue ribbon at your
button-hole."

"Yes; they sent me the order of Charles III.," returned Debray,
carelessly.

"Come, do not affect indifference, but confess you were pleased to have
it."

"Oh,