“Not only that,” continued Madame Dubarry, “but you may tell everyone the news. That Madame la Comtesse has had a slight accident and has now perfectly recovered. And now I must dismiss you, dear Monsieur Rochefort, for I have a world of business before me; but only till to-night, when we will meet at Versailles. You will be there, will you not?” “Yes,” said Rochefort, “I shall be there to see your triumph—and Mademoiselle Fontrailles?” “I shall not be there,” said the girl, “or only in spirit; but my dress will be there.” “Ah!” said Rochefort, “even that is something.” Then off he went. Light-hearted now and laughing, for it seemed to him that, though his affair had seemingly not made an inch of progress, all was well between him and Camille Fontrailles. CHAPTER VI THE COMTESSE DE BÉARN To present the mentality of the Comtesse de Béarn one would have to reconstruct the lady, and rebuild from all sorts of medieval constituents her mind, person and dress. Feudal times have left us cities such as Nuremberg and Vittoria standing just as they stood in the twilight of the Middle Ages, but the people have vanished, only vaguely to be recalled. The Comtesse de Béarn was medieval, and carried the twelfth century clinging to her coif and mantelet right into the heart of the Paris of 1770. Arrogant, narrow, superstitious and proud as Lucifer, this old lady, impoverished by years of litigation with the family of Saluce, inveigled up to Paris by a false statement that her lawsuit was about to be settled to her advantage, entertained by the Dubarrys and filled by them with promises and hopes, had agreed to act as introducer to the Comtesse. She disliked the business, but was prepared to swallow it for the sake of the lawsuit. Choiseul’s note conveyed in the basket of flowers had acted with withering effect. It was written by a master mind that understood finely the mind it was addressing, and its one object was to convey the sentence: “You have been tricked.” She saw the truth at once; she had been fetched up to Paris to act as a servant in the Dubarrys’ interests; she had been outwitted, played with. In an instant, twenty obscure and dubious happenings fell into their proper place, and she saw in a flash not only the deception but the fact that when she was done with she would be cast aside like a sucked orange; returned to her castle on the banks of the Meuse. The unholy anger that filled the old lady’s mind might have led her at once to open revolt had she not possessed a lively sense of the power of the Dubarrys, and an instinctive fear of the Vicomte Jean. To revolt and say: “I will take no part in the presentation,” would have led to a pitched battle, in which she felt she would be worsted. She was too old and friendless to fight all these young, vigorous people who were on their own ground. But she would not present the woman who had tricked her at the Court of Versailles.