"I am about to speak frankly to you, therefore; but before all let me offer my congratulations. I saw your Colombe just now: she is truly ravishingly beautiful; a little awkward, but that adds to her charm. And yet, between ourselves, I have racked my brain in vain,--I know you, and I cannot understand with what object you, a serious, prudent man, but slightly enamored, I fancy, of youth and beauty, are entering into this marriage. I say, with what object, for there must necessarily be something underneath it: you are not the man to take such a step at random." "Dame! one must settle down, madame; and the father is an old villain who has ducats to leave to his daughter." "But how old is he, pray?" "Oh, some fifty-five or six years." "And you, count?" "About the same age; but he is so used up." "I begin to understand, and to recognize your fine hand. I knew that you were above mere vulgar sentiment, and that yonder child's fascinations did not constitute the attraction for you." "Fie, madame! I have never even thought of them; if she had been ugly it would have been all the same; she happens to be pretty, so much the better." "Oh, that's all right, count, otherwise I should despair of you." "And now that you have found me, madame, will you deign to inform me--" "Oh, it is simply that I am indulging in some beautiful dreams for you," the duchess interposed. "Where I would like to see you, D'Orbec, do you know, is in Poyet's place, for I detest him," she added, with a malevolent glance at the chancellor, who was still walking with the constable. "What, madame, one of the most exalted posts in the realm?" "Well, are you not yourself an eminent man, count? But alas! my power is so precarious; my throne is upon the brink of an abyss. Even at this moment I am in mortal terror. The king has for a mistress the wife of a nobody, a petty judge named Féron. If the woman were ambitious we should be ruined. I ought to have taken the initiative myself in this whim of his Majesty's. Ah! I shall never find another like the little Duchesse de Brissac, whom I presented to him; a sweet woman of no force of character, a mere child. I shall always weep for her; she was not dangerous, and talked to the king of nothing but my perfections. Poor Marie! she assumed all the burdens of my position, and left me all the benefits. But this Féronnière, as they call her, why, it requires all my power to draw François I. away from her. I have exhausted my whole arsenal of seductions, and am driven, alas! to my last intrenchment, habit." "How so, madame?"