“Ah, well, his works were the text-book of my first reading lessons. Very badly brought up, you know. Oh, exceedingly badly. My apologue, then, is taken from Rabelais. Here it is: Bacchus created a wonderful fox, impossible to capture. Vulcan, on the other hand, gave a dog of his own creation the power to catch every animal that he should pursue. ‘Now,’ as my author has it, ‘it happened that the two met.’ You see what a wild and interminable chase. It seems to me, my dear duke, that destiny has in the same way brought us together, endowed with conflicting attributes; you who have received from the gods the gift of reaching all hearts, I whose heart will never be made prisoner.” She spoke these words, looking him full in the face, almost laughing, but sheathed and erect in the white tunic which seemed to defend her person against the liberties of his thought. He, the conqueror, the irresistible, had never before met one of this audacious and headstrong breed. He brought to bear upon her, therefore, all the magnetic currents of his seductiveness, while around them the rising murmur of the _fete_, the soft laughter, the rustle of satins and the rattling of pearls formed the accompaniment to this duet of mundane passion and juvenile irony. He resumed after a minute’s pause: “But how did the gods escape from that awkward situation?” “By turning the two runners into stone.” “Upon my word,” said he, “that is a solution which I do not at all accept. I defy the gods ever to petrify my heart.” A fiery gleam shot for a moment from his eyes, extinguished immediately by the thought that people were observing them. In effect, people were observing them intently, but no one with so much curiosity as Jenkins, who wandered round them a little way off, impatient and fidgety, as though he were annoyed with Felicia for taking private possession of the important personage of the assembly. The young girl laughingly called the duke’s attention to it. “People will say that I am monopolizing you.” She pointed out to him Monpavon waiting, standing near the Nabob who, from afar, was gazing at his excellency with the beseeching, submissive eyes of a big, good-tempered mastiff. The Minister of State then remembered the object which had brought him. He bowed to the young girl and returned to Monpavon, who was able at last to present to him “his honourable friend, M. Bernard Jansoulet.” His excellency bowed slightly, the _parvenu_ humbled himself lower than the earth, then they chatted for a moment.