ll your idea take you?" she asked evasively, her small
fingers tightening a gold hair-pin. "To Paris--to the Tuileries!" he
answered, rising to his feet.

"And you start--from Pontiac?"

"What difference, Pontiac or Cannes, like the Great Master after Elba,"
he said. "The principle is the same."

"The money?"

"It will come," he answered. "I have friends--and hopes."

She almost laughed. She was suddenly struck by the grotesqueness of the
situation. But she saw how she had hurt him, and she said instantly:

"Of course, with those one may go far. Sit down and tell me all your
plans."

He was about to comply, when, glancing out of the window, she saw the
old sergeant, now "General Lagroin," and Parpon hastening up the walk.
Parpon ambled comfortably beside the old man, who seemed ten years
younger than he had done the day before.

"Your army and cabinet, monseigneur!" she said with a pretty, mocking
gesture of salutation.

He glanced at her reprovingly. "My General and my Minister; as brave a
soldier and as able a counsellor as ever prince had. Madame," he added,
"they only are farceurs who do not dare, and have not wisdom. My General
has scars from Auerstadt, Austerlitz, and Waterloo; my Minister is
feared--in Pontiac. Was he not the trusted friend of the Grand Seigneur,
as he was called here, the father of your Monseiur De la Riviere? Has
he yet erred in advising me? Have we yet failed? Madame," he added,
a little rhetorically, "as we have begun, so will we end, true to our
principles, and--"

"And gentlemen of the king," she said provokingly, urging him on.

"Pardon, gentlemen of the Empire, madame, as time and our lives will
prove.... Madame, I thank you for your violets of Sunday last."

She admired the acumen that had seized the perfect opportunity to thank
her for the violets, the badge of the Great Emperor.

"My hives shall not be empty of bees--or honey," she said, alluding
to the imperial bees, and she touched his arm in a pretty, gracious
fashion.

"Madame--ah, madame!" he replied, and his eyes grew moist.

She bade the servant admit Lagroin and Parpon. They bowed profoundly,
first to Valmond, and afterwards to Madame Chalice. She saw the point,
and it amused her. She read in the old man's eye the soldier's contempt
for women, together with his new-born reverence and love for Valmond.
Lagroin was still dressed in the uniform of the Old Guard, and wore on
his breast the sacred ribbon which Val