Pierrot, however, like the historical parrot of all ages, though silent on the present occasion, doubtless _thought_ the more, for the attitude in which he held his head on one side, peering at his young mistress with shrewd unwinking eye, implied perceptions more than human, nay, even diabolical in their malignant sagacity. “What can I do?” said the Marquise, vehemently, pacing the long room with quick steps ill suited to the temperature and the occasion. “While the Regent lives I can never return to Paris. For myself, I sometimes fancy I could risk it; but when I think of you, Cerise—I dare not—I _dare_ not; that’s the truth. An insult, an injury, he might forgive, or at least forget; but a scene in which he enacted the part of the _Pantaleone_, whom everybody kicks and cuffs; in which he was discovered as a coxcomb, an intruder, and a _polisson_, and through the whole of which he is conscious, moreover, that he was intensely ridiculous—I protest to you I cannot conceive any outrage so horrible as to satisfy his revenge. No, my child, for generations my family have served the Bourbons, and we should know what they are: with all their good qualities there are certain offences they can never forgive, and this Regent is the worst of the line.” “Then, mamma,” observed Cerise cheerfully, though she smothered a sigh, “we must have patience and live where we are. It might be worse,” she added, pointing to the streak of deep-blue sea that belted the horizon. “This is a wider view and a fairer than the dead wall of Vincennes or the gratings of the Bastile, and some day, perhaps, some of our friends from France may drop in quite unexpectedly to offer their homage to Madame la Marquise. How the dear old Prince-Marshal would gasp in this climate, and how dreadfully he would swear at the lizards, centipedes, galley-wasps, red ants, and cockroaches! He who, brave as he is, never dared face a spider or an earwig! Mamma, I think if I could see his face over a borer-worm, I should have one more good laugh, even in such a heat as this.”