M. de
Navarreins replied."

Lucien's expansion of feeling would have softened the heart of any woman
less deeply wounded than Louise d'Espard de Negrepelisse; but her thirst
for vengeance was only increased by Lucien's graciousness. Des Lupeaulx
was right; Lucien was wanting in tact. It never crossed his mind that
this history of the patent was one of the mystifications at which
Mme. d'Espard was an adept. Emboldened with success and the flattering
distinction shown to him by Mlle. des Touches, he stayed till two
o'clock in the morning for a word in private with his hostess. Lucien
had learned in Royalist newspaper offices that Mlle. des Touches was the
author of a play in which _La petite Fay_, the marvel of the moment was
about to appear. As the rooms emptied, he drew Mlle. des Touches to a
sofa in the boudoir, and told the story of Coralie's misfortune and his
own so touchingly, that Mlle. des Touches promised to give the heroine's
part to his friend.

That promise put new life into Coralie. But the next day, as they
breakfasted together, Lucien opened Lousteau's newspaper, and found that
unlucky anecdote of the Keeper of the Seals and his wife. The story
was full of the blackest malice lurking in the most caustic wit. Louis
XVIII. was brought into the story in a masterly fashion, and held up
to ridicule in such a way that prosecution was impossible. Here is the
substance of a fiction for which the Liberal party attempted to win
credence, though they only succeeded in adding one more to the tale of
their ingenious calumnies.

The King's passion for pink-scented notes and a correspondence full of
madrigals and sparkling wit was declared to be the last phase of the
tender passion; love had reached the Doctrinaire stage; or had passed,
in other words, from the concrete to the abstract. The illustrious
lady, so cruelly ridiculed under the name of Octavie by Beranger, had
conceived (so it was said) the gravest fears. The correspondence was
languishing. The more Octavie displayed her wit, the cooler grew the
royal lover. At last Octavie discovered the cause of her decline; her
power was threatened by the novelty and piquancy of a correspondence
between the august scribe and the wife of his Keeper of the Seals. That
excellent woman was believed to be incapable of writing a note; she was
simply and solely godmother to the efforts of audacious ambition. Who
could be hidden behind her petticoats? Octavie decided, after maki