ants."

"What! have you made it up with Madame de Sabran?"

"We never quarreled, madame."

"Take care, duke; that looks like constancy."

"No, madame, it is calculation."

"Ah! I see that you are on the road toward becoming devoted."

"I never do things by halves, madame."

"Well, we will follow your example, Monsieur le Duc. And now we have
been an hour and a half away, and should, I think, return to the
gardens, that our absence may not be too much noticed; besides, I think
the Goddess of Night is on the shore, waiting to thank us for the
preference we have given her over the sun."

"With your permission, however, madame," said Laval, "I must keep you an
instant longer, to tell you the trouble I am in."

"Speak, count," replied the duchess; "what is the matter?"

"It is about our requests and our protestations. It was agreed, if you
remember, that they should be printed by workmen who cannot read."

"Well."

"I bought a press, and established it in the cellar of a house behind
the Val-de-Grace. I enlisted the necessary workmen, and, up to the
present time, have had the most satisfactory results; but the noise of
our machine has given rise to the suspicion that we were coining false
money, and yesterday the police made a descent on the house;
fortunately, there was time to stop the work and roll a bed over the
trap, so that they discovered nothing. But as the visit might be
renewed, and with a less fortunate result, as soon as they were gone I
dismissed the workmen, buried the press, and had all the proofs taken to
my own house."

"And you did well, count," cried the Cardinal de Polignac.

"But what are we to do now?" asked Madame de Maine.

"Have the press taken to my house," said Pompadour.

"Or mine," said Valef.

"No, no," said Malezieux; "a press is too dangerous a means. One of the
police may easily slip in among the workmen, and all will be lost.
Besides, there cannot be much left to print."

"The greater part is done," said Laval.

"Well," continued Malezieux, "my advice is, as before, to employ some
intelligent copyist, whose silence we can buy."

"Yes, this will be much safer," said Polignac.

"But where can we find such a man?" said the prince. "It is not a thing
for which we can take the first comer."

"If I dared," said the Abbe Brigaud.

"Dare, abbe! dare!" said the duchess.

"I should say that I know the man you want."

"Did I not tell you," said Pompadour, "that the abbe