e women dressed
in the extreme of fashion, who came forward with plentiful lack of
modesty, and a superabundance of gaiety and laughter.

Le Gardeur and Cadet did not rise like the rest, but kept their seats.
Cadet swore that De Pean had spoiled a jolly evening by inviting the
women to the Palace.

These women had been invited by De Pean to give zest to the wild orgie
that was intended to prepare Le Gardeur for their plot of to-morrow,
which was to compass the fall of the Bourgeois. They sat down with the
gentlemen, listening with peals of laughter to their coarse jests, and
tempting them to wilder follies. They drank, they sang, they danced and
conducted, or misconducted, themselves in such a thoroughly shameless
fashion that Bigot, Varin, and other experts of the Court swore that the
petits appartements of Versailles, or even the royal fetes of the Parc
aux cerfs, could not surpass the high life and jollity of the Palace of
the Intendant.

In that wild fashion Bigot had passed the night previous to his present
visit to Angelique. The Chevalier de Pean rode the length of the Grande
Allee and returned. The valet and horse of the Intendant were still
waiting at the door, and De Pean saw Bigot and Angelique still seated at
the window engaged in a lively conversation, and not apparently noticing
his presence in the street as he sat pulling hairs out of the mane of
his horse, "with the air of a man in love," as Angelique laughingly
remarked to Bigot.

Her quick eye, which nothing could escape, had seen De Pean the first
time he passed the house. She knew that he had come to visit her,
and seeing the horse of the Intendant at the door, had forborne to
enter,--that would not have been the way with Le Gardeur, she thought.
He would have entered all the readier had even the Dauphin held her in
conversation.

Angelique was woman enough to like best the bold gallant who carries the
female heart by storm and puts the parleying garrison of denial to the
sword, as the Sabine women admired the spirit of their Roman captors and
became the most faithful of wives.

De Pean, clever and unprincipled, was a menial in his soul, as cringing
to his superiors as he was arrogant to those below him.

"Fellow!" said he to Bigot's groom, "how long has the Intendant been
here?"

"All the afternoon, Chevalier," replied the man, respectfully uncovering
his head.

"Hum! and have they sat at the window all the time?"

"I have no eyes to w