"Alas, unfortunately not, monseigneur, for if I were the Duc d'Orleans and regent, I would make myself cardinal. But do not let us speak of that, it will come in time, I hope; besides, I have found a way of managing the affair which troubles you." "I distrust you, abbe. I warn you." "Stay, monseigneur; you only love the chevalier because your daughter does?" "Well?" "But if the chevalier repaid her fidelity by ingratitude. Mon Dieu! the young woman is proud, monseigneur; she herself would give him up. That would be well played, I think." "The chevalier cease to love Helene! impossible; she is an angel." "Many angels have gone through that, monseigneur; besides, the Bastille does and undoes many things, and one soon becomes corrupted there, especially in the society he will find there." "Well, we shall see, but not a step without my consent." "Fear nothing, monseigneur. Will you now examine the papers from Nantes?" "Yes, but first send me Madame Desroches." "Certainly." Dubois rang and gave the regent's orders. Ten minutes after Madame Desroches entered timidly; but instead of the storm she had expected, she received a smile and a hundred louis. "I do not understand it," thought she; "after all, the young girl cannot be his daughter." CHAPTER XXII. IN BRETAGNE. Our readers must now permit us to look backward, for we have (in following the principal persons of our history) neglected some others in Bretagne, who deserve some notice; besides, if we do not represent them as taking an active part in this tale, history is ready with her inflexible voice to contradict us; we must, therefore, for the present, submit to the exigencies of history. Bretagne had, from the first, taken an active part in the movement of the legitimated bastards; this province, which had given pledges of fidelity to monarchical principles, and pushed them to exaggeration, if not to madness, since it preferred the adulterous offspring of a king to the interests of a kingdom, and since its love became a crime by calling in aid of the pretensions of those whom it recognized as its princes, enemies against whom Louis XIV. for sixty years, and France for two centuries had waged a war of extermination. We have seen the list of the principal names which constituted this revolt; the regent had wittily said that it contained the head and tail; but he was mistaken--it was the head and body. The head was the council of the legitimated princes, the king of Spain, and his imbecile agent, the prince of Cellamare; the body was formed by those brave and clever men who were now in the Bastille; but the tail was now agitating in Bretagne among a people unaccustomed to the ways of a court, and it was a tail armed with stings like those of a scorpion, and which was the most to be feared. The Bretagne chiefs, then, renewed the Chevalier de Rohan, under Louis XIV.; we say the Chevalier de Rohan, because to every conspiracy must be given the name of a chief.