they give me twice as
much as if I had told them to be good and nice, as they call it! Pshaw!
Nice! If only men knew us as we really are!"

"Well, I do not like women, Mere Malheur," replied La Corriveau; "they
sneer at you and me and call us witch and sorceress, and they will lie,
steal, kill, and do worse themselves for the sake of one man to-day, and
cast him off for sake of another to-morrow! Wise Solomon found only
one good woman in a thousand; the wisest man now finds not one in a
worldful! It were better all of us were dead, Mere Malheur; but pour me
out a glass of wine, for I am tired of tramping in the dark to the house
of that gay lady I told you of."

Mere Malheur poured out a glass of choice Beaume from a dame-jeanne
which she had received from a roguish sailor, who had stolen it from his
ship.

"But you have not told me who she is, Dame Dodier," replied Mere
Malheur, refilling the glass of La Corriveau.

"Nor will I yet. She is fit to be your mistress and mine, whoever she
is; but I shall not go again to see her."

And La Corriveau did not again visit the house of Angelique. She had
received from her precise information respecting the movements of the
Intendant. He had gone to the Trois Rivieres on urgent affairs, and
might be absent for a week.

Angelique had received from Varin, in reply to her eager question for
news, a short, falsified account of the proceedings in the Council
relative to Caroline and of Bigot's indignant denial of all knowledge of
her.

Varin, as a member of the Council, dared not reveal the truth, but would
give his familiars half-hints, or tell to others elaborate lies, when
pressed for information. He did not, in this case, even hint at the fact
that a search was to be made for Caroline. Had he done so, Angelique
would herself have given secret information to the Governor to order
the search of Beaumanoir, and thus got her rival out of the way without
trouble, risk, or crime.

But it was not to be. The little word that would have set her active
spirit on fire to aid in the search for Caroline was not spoken, and her
thoughts remained immovably fixed upon her death.

But if Angelique had been misled by Varin as to what had passed at the
Council, Mere Malheur, through her intercourse with a servant of Varin,
had learned the truth. An eavesdropping groom had overheard his
master and the Intendant conversing on the letters of the Baron and La
Pompadour. The man told his swee