You recommend to me M. de Chanlay, and on your
recommendation I make it a rose-water Bastille to him; sumptuous
repasts, a charming governor. I let him pierce holes in your floors, and
spoil your walls, all which will cost us a great deal to repair. Since
his entrance, it is quite a fete. Dumesnil talks all day through his
chimney, Mademoiselle de Launay fishes with a line through her window,
Pompadour drinks champagne. There is nothing to be said to all this:
these are your family affairs; but in Bretagne you have nothing to see,
and I forbid you to look, monseigneur, unless you have a few more
unknown daughters there, which is possible."

"Dubois! scoundrel!"

"Ah! you think when you have said 'Dubois,' and added 'scoundrel' to my
name, you have done everything. Well, scoundrel as much as you please;
meanwhile, but for the scoundrel you would have been assassinated."

"Well, what then?"

"What then! Hear the statesman! Well, then, I should be hanged, perhaps,
which is a consideration; then Madame de Maintenon would be regent of
France! What a joke! What then, indeed! To think that a philosophic
prince should utter such naivetes! Oh, Marcus Aurelius! was it not he
who said, 'Populos esse demum felices si reges philosophi forent, aut
philosophi reges?' Here is a sample."

Dubois still wrote on.

"Dubois! you do not know this young man."

"What young man?"

"The chevalier."

"Really! you shall present him to me when he is your son-in-law."

"That will be to-morrow, Dubois."

The abbe looked round in astonishment, and looking at the regent, with
his little eyes as wide open as possible--

"Ah, monseigneur, are you mad?" he said.

"No, but he is an honorable man, and you know that they are rare."

"Honorable man! Ah, you have a strange idea of honor."

"Yes; I believe that we differ in our ideas of it."

"What has this honorable man done! Has he poisoned the dagger with which
he meant to assassinate you? for then he would be more than an honorable
man, he would be a saint. We have already St. Jacques Clement, St.
Ravaillac; St. Gaston is wanting in the calendar. Quick, quick,
monseigneur! you who will not ask the pope to give a cardinal's hat to
your minister, ask him to canonize your assassin; and for the first time
in your life you would be logical."

"Dubois, I tell you there are few capable of doing what this young man
has done."

"Peste! that is lucky; if there were ten in France I should certa