“His excellency told me to come and wait for him in his room,” replied the Nabob, very proud of being thus introduced into the privacy of the apartments, at an hour, especially, when visitors were not generally received. As a fact, the duke was beginning to show a real liking for this savage, for several reasons: to begin with, he liked audacious people, adventurers who followed their lucky star. Was he not one of them himself? Then, the Nabob amused him; his accent, his frank manners, his rather coarse and impudent flattery, were a change for him from the eternal conventionality of his surroundings, from that scourge of administrative and court life which he held in horror--the set speech--in such great horror that he never finished a sentence which he had begun. The Nabob had an unforeseen way of finishing his which was sometimes full of surprises. A fine gambler as well, losing games of _ecarte_ at five thousand francs the fish without flinching. And so convenient when one wanted to get rid of a picture, always ready to buy, no matter at what price. To these motives of condescending kindness there had come to be joined of late a sentiment of pity and indignation in the face of the tenacity with which the unfortunate man was being persecuted, the cowardly and merciless war so ably managed, that public opinion, always credulous and with neck outstretched to see which way the wind is blowing, was beginning to be seriously influenced. One must do to Mora the justice of admitting that he was no follower of the crowd. When he had seen in a corner of the gallery the simple but rather piteous and discomfited face of the Nabob, he had thought it cowardly to receive him there, and had sent him up to his private room. Jenkins and Jansoulet, sufficiently embarrassed by each other’s presence, exchanged a few commonplace words. Their great friendship had recently cooled, Jansoulet having refused point-blank all further subsidies to the Bethlehem Society, leaving the business on the Irishman’s hands, who was furious at this defection, and much more furious still at this moment because he had not been able to open Felicia’s letter before the arrival of the intruder. The Nabob, on his side, was asking himself whether the doctor was going to be present at the conversation which he wished to have with the duke on the subject of the infamous insinuations with which the _Messenger_ was pursuing him; anxious also to know whether these calumnies might not have produced a coolness in that sovereign good-will which was so necessary to him at the moment of the verification of his election. The greeting which he had received in the gallery had half reassured him on this point; he was entirely satisfied when the duke entered and came towards him with outstretched hand: “Well, my poor Jansoulet, I hope Paris is making you pay dearly enough for your welcome. What brawling and hate and spite one finds!” “Ah, M. le Duc, if you knew--”