he silence_ you do not feel
all the poetry thrown into the part of Schedoni by Mrs. Radcliffe in
_The Black Penitent_, you do not deserve to read a romance."

"For my part," said Dinah, who had some pity on the eighteen faces
gazing up at Lousteau, "I see how the story is progressing. I know it
all. I am in Rome; I can see the body of a murdered husband whose wife,
as bold as she is wicked, has made her bed on the crater of a
volcano. Every night, at every kiss, she says to herself, 'All will be
discovered!'"

"Can you see her," said Lousteau, "clasping Monsieur Adolphe in her
arms, to her heart, throwing her whole life into a kiss?--Adolphe I see
as a well-made young man, but not clever--the sort of man an Italian
woman likes. Rinaldo hovers behind the scenes of a plot we do not know,
but which must be as full of incident as a melodrama by Pixerecourt.
Or we can imagine Rinaldo crossing the stage in the background like a
figure in one of Victor Hugo's plays."

"He, perhaps, is the husband," exclaimed Madame de la Baudraye.

"Do you understand anything of it all?" Madame Piedefer asked of the
Presidente.

"Why, it is charming!" said Dinah to her mother.

All the good folks of Sancerre sat with eyes as large as five-franc
pieces.

"Go on, I beg," said the hostess.

Lousteau went on:--

210 OLYMPIA

"Your key----"

"Have you lost it?"

"It is in the arbor."

"Let us hasten."

"Can the Cardinal have taken it?"

"No, here it is."

"What danger we have escaped!"

Olympia looked at the key, and
fancied she recognized it as her own.
But Rinaldo had changed it; his
cunning had triumphed; he had the
right key. Like a modern Cartouche,
he was no less skilful than bold,
and suspecting that nothing but a
vast treasure could require a duchess
to carry it constantly at her belt.

"Guess!" cried Lousteau. "The corresponding page is not here. We must
look to page 212 to relieve our anxiety."

212 OLYMPIA

"If the key had been lost?"

"He would now be a dead man."

"Dead? But ought you not to
grant the last request he made, and
to give him his liberty on the con-
ditions----"

"You do not know him."

"But--"

"Silence! I took you for my
lover, not for my confessor."

Adolphe was silent.

"And then comes an exquisite galloping goat, a tail-piece drawn by
Normand, and cut by Duplat.--the names are signed," said Loustea