Richelieu bowed low, and fixed his eyes upon the Count without reply--a signal that the audience was over, which was not lost upon De Blenau, who very gladly took his leave of the Minister, hoping most devoutly never to see his face again. The ambiguity of his last sentence, however, had not escaped the Cardinal. "So, Monsieur de Blenau!" said he, as soon as the Count had left him, "you can make speeches with a double meaning also! Can you so? You may rue it though, for I will find means to bend your proud spirit, or to break it; and that before three days be over. Is every thing prepared for my passage to Chantilly?" he continued, turning to the attendant. "All is prepared, please your Eminence," replied the man; "and as I passed, I saw Monsieur de Chavigni getting into his chaise to set out." "We will let him be an hour or two in advance," said the Cardinal. "Send in the Marquis de Goumont;" and he again applied himself to other affairs. CHAPTER XII. "An entire new comedy, with new scenery, dresses, and decorations." The little village of Mesnil St. Loup, all insignificant as it is, was at the time of my tale a place of even less consequence than it appears now-a-days, when nine people out of ten have scarcely ever heard of its existence. It was, nevertheless, a pretty-looking place; and had its little _auberge_, on the same scale and in the same style as the village to which it belonged,--small, neat, and picturesque, with its high pole before the door, crowned with a gay garland of flowers, which served both for sign and inscription to the inn; being fully as comprehensible an intimation to the peasantry of the day, that "Bon vin et bonne chère" were to be obtained within, as the most artful flourish of a modern sign-painter. True it is, that the little cabaret of Mesnil St. Loup was seldom troubled with the presence of a traveller; but there the country people would congregate after the labours of the day, and enjoy their simple sports with a relish that luxury knows not. The high road from Paris to Troyes passed quite in another direction; and a stranger in Mesnil St. Loup was a far greater stranger than he could possibly have been anywhere else, except perhaps in newly discovered America. For there was nothing to excite either interest or curiosity; except it were the little church, which had seen many a century pass over its primitive walls, remaining still unaltered, while five or six old trees, which had been its companions for time out of mind, began to show strong signs of decay, in their rifted bark and falling branches, but still formed a picturesque group, with a great stone cross and fountain underneath them, and a seat for the weary traveller to rest himself in their shade.