Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) [Illustration: Frontispiece] _THE MILKMAID'S WEDDING_ _Denise, beaming with love and happiness, embellishing by her charms and her grace the modest costume she had selected, was led to the altar by the man she loved._ _All the people of the village assembled to see the little milkmaid married._ NOVELS BY Paul de Kock VOLUME XX THE MILKMAID OF MONTFERMEIL PRINTED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH GEORGE BARRIE'S SONS THE JEFFERSON PRESS BOSTON NEW YORK _Copyrighted, 1903-1904, by G. B. & Sons._ THE MILKMAID OF MONTFERMEIL I A CONVERSATION IN A CABRIOLET "For you can't go on like this forever, lieutenant--you must agree to that. The great Turenne didn't fight ten battles at once and didn't carry on six intrigues on the same day." "No, my dear Bertrand, but Cæsar dictated four letters at once in four different languages, and Pico de la Mirandola boasted that he was familiar with and could talk _de omni re scibili_----" "I beg pardon, lieutenant, I don't know Latin." "That means that he claimed to know all languages, to have gone to the bottom of all the sciences, to be able to refute all creeds and reconcile theologians of all breeds." "As I don't think that you're so conceited as that, lieutenant, I won't compare you with this Monsieur de la Mirandola, who claimed to know everything. As for Cæsar, I've heard him spoken of as a very great man, but I'm sure he didn't have as many mistresses as you." "You're mistaken, Bertrand; the great men of antiquity had a great many female slaves, concubines, and often cast off their wives and took new ones. Love and Pleasure had temples in Greece; and those high and mighty Romans, who are represented to us as so strait-laced, weren't ashamed to indulge in the wildest debauchery, to crown themselves with myrtle and roses, and sometimes to appear at their banquets in the costumes of our first parents." "For God's sake, lieutenant, let's drop the Romans, with whom I never exchanged a shot, and go back to what we were talking about." "I propose to prove to you, my dear Bertrand, that we are very far from surpassing preceding generations in folly, and are in fact much more virtuous." "Is that why you have four mistresses?"