e by warning him
that the king "gardait une dent" against him. [ Translator's
note.--"Garder une dent," that is, to keep up a grudge, means literally
"to keep a tooth" against him.]

"Pardieu!" replied the chevalier, "I am indeed unlucky when the only
tooth left to him remains to bite me."

This pun had been repeated, and had reached Louis XIV, so that the
chevalier presently heard, directly enough this time, that the king
desired him to travel for some years. He knew the danger of
neglecting--such intimations, and since he thought the country after all
preferable to the Bastille, he left Paris, and arrived at Avignon,
surrounded by the halo of interest that naturally attends a handsome
young persecuted nobleman.

The virtue of Madame d'Urban was as much cried up at Avignon as the
ill-behaviour of the chevalier had been reprobated in Paris. A
reputation equal to his own, but so opposite in kind, could not fail to
be very offensive to him, therefore he determined immediately upon
arriving to play one against the other.

Nothing was easier than the attempt. M. d'Urban, sure of his wife's
virtue, allowed her entire liberty; the chevalier saw her wherever he
chose to see her, and every time he saw her found means to express a
growing passion. Whether because the hour had come for Madame d'Urban,
or whether because she was dazzled by the splendour of the chevalier's
belonging to a princely house, her virtue, hitherto so fierce, melted
like snow in the May sunshine; and the chevalier, luckier than the poor
page, took the husband's place without any attempt on Madame d'Urban's
part to cry for help.

As all the chevalier desired was public triumph, he took care to make the
whole town acquainted at once with his success; then, as some infidels of
the neighbourhood still doubted, the chevalier ordered one of his
servants to wait for him at the marquise's door with a lantern and a
bell. At one in the morning, the chevalier came out, and the servant
walked before him, ringing the bell. At this unaccustomed sound, a great
number of townspeople, who had been quietly asleep, awoke, and, curious
to see what was happening, opened their windows. They beheld the
chevalier, walking gravely behind his servant, who continued to light his
master's way and to ring along the course of the street that lay between
Madame d'Urban's house and his own. As he had made no mystery to anyone
of his love affair, nobody took the trouble even