e a very vague recollection of the matter."

"That is likely enough, for you have so many affairs to attend to.
However, I do not believe you have any affair in the world of greater
importance than this one."

"Tell me, then, why we purchased this appointment."

"Why, in order to render him a service in the first place, and
afterwards ourselves."

"Ourselves? You are joking."

"Monseigneur, the time may come when the governor of the Bastile may
prove a very excellent acquaintance."

"I have not the good fortune to understand you, D'Herblay."

"Monseigneur, we had our own poets, our own engineer, our own architect,
our own musicians, our own printer, and our own painters; we needed our
own governor of the Bastile."

"Do you think so?"

"Let us not deceive ourselves, monseigneur; we are very much opposed to
paying the Bastile a visit," added the prelate, displaying, beneath
his pale lips, teeth which were still the same beautiful teeth so much
admired thirty years previously by Marie Michon.

"And you think it is not too much to pay one hundred and fifty thousand
francs for that? I thought you generally put out money at better
interest than that."

"The day will come when you will admit your mistake."

"My dear D'Herblay, the very day on which a man enters the Bastile, he
is no longer protected by his past."

"Yes, he is, if the bonds are perfectly regular; besides, that good
fellow Baisemeaux has not a courtier's heart. I am certain, my lord,
that he will not remain ungrateful for that money, without taking into
account, I repeat, that I retain the acknowledgments."

"It is a strange affair! usury in a matter of benevolence."

"Do not mix yourself up with it, monseigneur; if there be usury, it is
I who practice it, and both of us reap the advantage from it--that is
all."

"Some intrigue, D'Herblay?"

"I do not deny it."

"And Baisemeaux an accomplice in it?"

"Why not?--there are worse accomplices than he. May I depend, then, upon
the five thousand pistoles to-morrow?"

"Do you want them this evening?"

"It would be better, for I wish to start early; poor Baisemeaux will not
be able to imagine what has become of me, and must be upon thorns."

"You shall have the amount in an hour. Ah, D'Herblay, the interest
of your one hundred and fifty thousand francs will never pay my four
millions for me."

"Why not, monseigneur."

"Good-night, I have business to transact with my clerks before I
retir