hen, the
servant having withdrawn:

"Jenkins, _mon bon_, you have already worked miracles for me. I ask you
for one more. Double the dose of my pearls; find something, whatever
you will. But I must be feeling young by Sunday. You understand me,
altogether young."

And on the little letter in his hand, his fingers, warm once more and
feverish, clinched themselves with a thrill of eager desire.

"Take care, M. le Duc," said Jenkins, very pale and with compressed
lips. "I have no wish to alarm you unnecessarily with regard to the
feeble state of your health, but it becomes my duty--"

Mora gave a smile of pretty arrogance:

"Your duty and my pleasure are two separate things, my worthy friend.
Let me burn the candle at both ends, if it amuses me. I have never had
so fine an opportunity as this time."

He started:

"The duchess!"

A door concealed behind a curtain had just opened to give passage to a
merry little head with fair curls in disorder, quite fairy-like amid the
laces and frills of a dressing-jacket worthy of a princess:

"What do I hear? You have not gone out? But do scold him, doctor. He is
wrong, isn't he, to have so many fancies about himself? Look at him--a
picture of health!"

"There--you see," said the duke, laughing, to the Irishman. "You will
not come in, duchess?"

"No, I am going to carry you off, on the contrary. My uncle d'Estaing
has sent me a cage full of tropical birds. I want to show them to you.
Wonderful creatures, of all colours, with little eyes like black pearls.
And so sensitive to cold--nearly as much so as you are."

"Let us go and have a look at them," said the minister. "Wait for me,
Jenkins. I shall be back in a moment."

Then, noticing that he still had his letter in his hand, he threw it
carelessly into the drawer of the little table at which he had been
signing papers, and left the room behind the duchess, with the fine
coolness of a husband accustomed to these changes of situation.

What prodigious mechanic, what incomparable manufacturer of toys,
must it have been who succeeded in endowing the human mask with its
suppleness, its marvellous elasticity! How interesting to observe
the face of this great seigneur surprised in the very planning of his
adultery, with cheeks flushed in the anticipation of promised delights,
calming down at a moment's notice into the serenity of conjugal
tenderness; how fine the devout obsequiousness, the paternal smile,
after the Frankli