last resentful grumblings died away when it occurred to
him that, fixed as he was to his place, to uproot himself was utterly
impossible. Meanwhile Madame Astier, sitting on the edge of an armchair
in her dressing-gown, with a lace wrap round her head, watched his
proceedings and murmured between yawn and yawn with placid irony,
'Really, Leonard, really!'

CHAPTER X.

'My notion is that people, like things, have a right and a wrong way up,
and there's always a place to get hold of, if you want to have a good
control and grasp of them. I know where the place is, and that's my
power! Driver, to the Tete Noire.' At Paul Astier's order the open
carriage, in which the three tall hats belonging to Freydet, Vedrine,
and himself rose in funereal outline against the brightness of the
afternoon landscape, drew up on the right-hand side of the bridge at
St. Cloud, in front of the inn he had named. Every jolt of the hired
conveyance over the paving of the square brought into sight an ominous
long case of green baize projecting beyond the lowered hood of the
carriage. Paul had chosen, as seconds for this meeting with D'Athis,
first the Vicomte de Freydet, on account of his title and his 'de,' and
with him the Count Adriani. But the Papal Embassy was afraid of adding
another scandal to the recent affair of the Cardinal's hat, and he had
been obliged to find a substitute for Pepino in the sculptor, who would
perhaps allow himself at the last minute to be described in the official
statement as 'Marquis.' The matter, however, was not supposed to be
serious, only a quarrel at the club over the card-table, where the
Prince had taken a hand for a last game before leaving Paris. The affair
could not be hushed up; it was specially impossible to cave in to a
fighting man like Paul Astier, who had a great reputation in fencing
rooms, and whose records were framed and hung in the shooting-gallery in
the Avenue d'Antin.

While the carriage waited by the terrace of the _restaurant_ and the
waiters unobtrusively bestowed on it knowing glances, down a steep
little path came rolling a short, fat man, with the white spats, white
tie, silk hat, and captivating air of the doctor of a fashionable
watering-place. He made signals from the distance with his sunshade,
there's Gomes,' said Paul. Doctor Gomes, formerly on the resident
staff of one of the Paris hospitals, had been ruined by play and an old
attachment. Now he was 'Uncle Gomes,' and ha