"Why is he doing that?" "You must ask somebody who knows him better than I do. They say you knew him yourself once well enough, eh?" "He is not a man I have much faith in," said Colville, vaguely. "And France has no faith in him at all." "So I'm told. But France--well, does France know what she wants? She mostly wants something without knowing what it is. She is like a woman. It's excitement she wants, perhaps. And she will buy it at any cost, and then find afterward she has paid too dear for it. That is like a woman, too. But it isn't another Bonaparte she wants, I am sure of that." "So am I," answered Colville, with a side glance toward Barebone, a mere flicker of the eyelids. "Not unless it is a Napoleon of that ilk." "And he is not," completed Colville. "But--" the Scotchman paused, for a waiter came at this moment to tell him that his dinner was ready at a table nearer to the fire. "But," he went on, in French, for the waiter lingered, "but he might be able to persuade France that it is himself she wants--might he not, now? With money at the back of it, eh?" "He might," admitted Colville, doubtfully. The Scotchman moved away, but came back again. "I am thinking," he said, with a grim smile, "that like all intelligent people who know France, you are aware that it is a King she wants." "But not an Orleans King," replied Colville, with his friendly and indifferent laugh. The Scotchman smiled more grimly still and went away. He was seated too near for Colville and Loo to talk of him. But Colville took an opportunity to mention his name in an undertone. It was a name known all over Europe then, and forgotten now. CHAPTER XXXI THE THURSDAY OF MADAME DE CHANTONNAY "It is," Madame de Chantonnay had maintained throughout the months of January and February--"it is an affair of the heart." She continued to hold this opinion with, however, a shade less conviction, well into a cold March. "It is an affair of the heart, Abbé," she said. "_Allez_! I know what I talk of. It is an affair of the heart and nothing more. There is some one in England: some blonde English girl. They are always washing, I am told. And certainly they have that air--like a garment that has been too often to the _blanchisseuse_ and has lost its substance. A beautiful skin, I allow you. But so thin--so thin." "The skin, madame?" inquired the Abbé Touvent, with that gentle and cackling humour in which the ordained of any Church may indulge after a good dinner.