mistress arose, put on her dressing-gown and slippers with a vivacity
which betokened anger; she then seated herself at her desk and began to
write rapidly, dashing her pen over the satiny paper without troubling
herself as to blots. The last word was ended with a dash as energetically
drawn as the Napoleonic flourish.

When a young man who, according to custom, begins to read the end of his
letters first finds an arabesque of this style at the bottom of a lady's
letter, he ought to arm himself with patience and resignation before he
reads its contents.

CHAPTER X

PLOTS

That evening, when Gerfaut entered his room he hardly took time to place
the candlestick which he held in his hand upon the mantel before he took
from his waistcoat pocket a paper reduced to microscopic dimensions,
which he carried to his lips and kissed passionately before opening. His
eyes fell first upon the threatening flourish of the final word; this
word was: Adieu!

"Hum!" said the lover, whose exaltation was sensibly cooled at this
sight.

He read the whole letter with one glance of the eye, darting to the
culminating point of each phrase as a deer bounds over ledges of rocks;
he weighed the plain meaning as well as the innuendoes of the slightest
expression, like a rabbi who comments upon the Bible, and deciphered the
erasures with the patience of a seeker after hieroglyphics, so as to
detach from them some particle of the idea they had contained. After
analyzing and criticising this note in all its most imperceptible shades,
he crushed it within his hand and began to pace the floor, uttering from
time to time some of those exclamations which the Dictionnaire de
l'Academie has not yet decided to sanction; for all lovers resemble the
lazzaroni who kiss San-Gennaro's feet when he acts well, but who call him
briconne as soon as they have reason to complain of him. However, women
are very kind, and almost invariably excuse the stones that an angry
lover throws at them in such moments of acute disappointment, and
willingly say with the indulgent smile of the Roman emperor: "I feel no
wound!"

In the midst of this paroxysm of furious anger, two or three knocks
resounded behind the woodwork.

"Are you composing?" asked a voice like that of a ventriloquist; "I am
with you."

A minute later, Marillac appeared upon the threshold, in his slippers and
with a silk handkerchief tied about his head, holding his candlestick in
one hand and