His Excellency was at his toilet, his two friends being present, when the marquise’s letter was brought in to him. Its delivery had to be delayed, pending the performance of an important rite. This was no less than the placing of the ducal wig in position on the ducal poll. M. Frisson, the _perruquier_, spotlessly aproned and with a comb stuck in the side-frizzle of his own bob-jerom, as a clerk sticks a pen behind his ear, received the august erection from an attendant who had just brought it in from the powdering-closet, and, delicately shaking and blowing on it, poised it a moment over the cropt scalp, with the air of an archbishop officiating at a coronation, before he deftly lowered it into place. It was an action of ineffable and unfaltering elegance, necessitating none but the most trifling of after-touches to complete the effect--a slight joining of the flats, so to speak, with a fragrant grease-stick, a whiff of powder, a just more perceptible distribution of the rouge on the cheekbones. His fingers fluttered like butterflies tasting the honey of flowers; he stood back finally to admire his own work; a valet offered the duke a laced _mouchoir_ heavily scented with tuberose; and the ceremony was accomplished. Don Philip, exhaling incense, proceeded leisurely, the attendants being dismissed, to read the _gouvernante’s_ communication. But first he put it from him with a nose of disgust. “Toilet-vinegar,” he said. “The very ink reeks of it. What odds on the writer?” “Ten to one on the Gonzalès,” cried la Coque. “No takers,” said the duke, and, frowning, perused the thing at arm’s length. Both men sat eyeing him, the one inquisitively, the other covertly, as he read the letter. He pished and anathema’d over it a good deal. “Twenty gold ducats to a lira that she asks her wages in it!” cried la Coque impulsively, as the duke made an end. Philip sniggered. “Taken,” he said, and tossed the letter across to the speaker. La Coque made a wry face, and la Roque laughed softly and enjoyingly. He was a full-bodied man, with small drooping-lidded eyes and a small moist mouth. “Look before you leap, my little Charles, is a ver-y good proverb,” he said. “Bah! good for cardsharpers,” retorted la Coque angrily. “Is that,” said the other smoothly, “a specific innuendo or a generalisation?” “Supposing it is the former?” said la Coque insolently. “Then I repudiate it, with----” “With what?” demanded the coxcomb, rising. “With considerable indignation,” said la Roque. The duke made a laughing gesture. “Put down your crest, bully-boy; and either read the letter or hand it me back.” La Coque’s curiosity got the better of his temper, and, reseating himself, he obeyed, muttering below his breath. After a while he looked up, a very sneering expression on his pert combative face: “Her Highness shows a better judgment in music than some other people--that is all I have got to remark,” he said.