y, Madame de Palme believed in her complete success;
she hastily judged that she now had but to rivet my chains and bind me to
her triumph, a feeble addition of glory assuredly, but which had, after
all, the merit, in her eyes, of having been contested. During the evening,
as I was leaving the whist-table, she advanced toward me deliberately, and
requested me to do her the honor of figuring with her in the character
dance called the cotillon.[B] I excused myself laughingly on my complete
inexperience; she insisted, declaring that I had evident dispositions for
dancing, and reminding me of the agility I had displayed in the forest.
Finally, and to close the debate, she led me away familiarly by the arm,
adding that she was not in the habit of being refused.

"Nor I, madam," I said, "in that of making a show of myself."

"What! not even to gratify me?"

"Not even for that, madam, and were it the only means of succeeding in
doing so."

I bowed to her smilingly after these words, which I had emphasized in such
a positive manner that she insisted no more. She dropped my arm abruptly
and returned to join a group of dancers who were observing us at a
distance with manifest interest. She was received by them with whispers
and smiles, to which she replied with a few rapid sentences, among which I
only caught the word _revanche_. I paid no further attention to the matter
for the time being, and my soul went to converse amid the clouds with the
soul of Madame Durmaitre.

The next day a grand hunt was to take place in the forest. I had arranged
to take no share in it, wishing to make the best of a whole day of
solitude to push forward my hopeless undertaking. Toward noon, the hunters
met in the court-yard of the chateau, which rang again for some fifteen
minutes with the loud blast of the trumpets, the stamping of horses, and
the yelping of the pack. Then the tumultuous crowd disappeared down the
avenue, the noise gradually died away, and I remained master of myself and
of my mind, in the midst of a silence the more grateful that it is the
more rare on this meridian.

I had been enjoying my solitude for a few minutes, and I was turning over
the folio pages of the _Neustra pia_, while smiling at my own happiness,
when I fancied I heard the gallop of a horse in the avenue, and soon after
on the pavement of the court. Some hunter behind time, I thought, and,
taking up my pen, I began extracting from the enormous volume the passag