he_ never waited.

Standing with his back to the fire, dressed in a blue fur-trimmed
jacket, which heightened by its soft reflection the strength and
haughtiness of his face, the President of the Council was
superintending the drawing of a Pierrette's costume for the duchess to
wear at her next ball, and giving directions with as much gravity as if
he were dictating the draft of a law.

"Have very fine pleats on the ruff and none at all on the
sleeves.--Good-morning, Jenkins. At your service."

Jenkins bowed and stepped forward into the enormous room, whose
windows, opening on a garden that extended to the Seine, commanded one
of the loveliest views in all Paris, the bridges, the Tuileries, the
Louvre, interlaced with trees as black as if they were drawn in India
ink on the wavering background of the mist. A broad, very low bed on a
platform a few steps above the floor, two or three small lacquer
screens with vague fanciful decorations in gold, denoting, as did the
double doors and the heavy woollen carpet, a dread of cold carried to
excess, chairs of various styles, long chairs and low chairs, placed at
random, all well-stuffed and of lazy or voluptuous shapes, composed the
furniture of that famous room, where the most momentous and the most
trivial questions were discussed with the same gravity of tone and
manner. There was a beautiful portrait of the duchess on the wall; and
on the mantel a bust of the duke, the work of Felicia Ruys, which had
received the honor of a medal of the first class at the recent Salon.

"Well, Jenkins, how goes it this morning?" said His Excellency, walking
to meet the doctor, while the costumer was collecting his fashion
plates, which were strewn about over all the chairs.

"And you, my dear duke? I fancied that you were a little pale last
night at the Varietes."

"Nonsense! I was never so well. Your pills have a most amazing effect
on me. I feel so lively, so vigorous. When I think how completely
foundered I was six months ago!"

Jenkins, without speaking, had put his great head against the
minister's jacket, at the spot where the heart beats in the majority of
mankind. He listened a moment while His Excellency continued to talk in
the indolent, listless tone which was one of his chief claims to
distinction.

"Whom were you with last night, doctor? That great bronzed Tartar who
laughed so loud at the front of your box?"

"That was the Nabob, Monsieur le Duc. The famous Jansoule