Unable to believe that the young marquis could have scorned his challenge, Frederick, in his feverish impatience, devised all sorts of excuses for his adversary's delay. He had not received the letter until that morning; he had doubtless been obliged to do some manoeuvring to be able to go out alone; possibly he had preferred to wait until nearer evening. Once Frederick, thinking of his mother and of her despair, said to himself that perhaps in less than an hour he would have ceased to live. This gloomy reflection rather weakened his resolution for a moment, but he soon said to himself: "It will be better for me to die. My death will cost my mother fewer tears than my life, judging from those I have already compelled her to shed." While he was thus awaiting the arrival of the marquis, a carriage that had left the château about three o'clock in the afternoon paused at the intersection of the footpath not far from the so-called Grand Sire's Rock. When this low, roomy equipage drawn by two magnificent horses stopped at the cross-roads, two tall, powdered footmen descended from their perch, and one of them opened the carriage door, through which the Dowager-Marquise de Pont Brillant alighted quite nimbly in spite of her eighty-eight years; after which another woman, quite as old as the dowager, also stepped out. The other footman, taking one of the folding-chairs which invalids or very old people often use during their walks, was preparing to follow the two octogenarians when the marquise said, in a clear though rather quavering voice: "Remain with the carriage, which will wait for me here. Give the folding-chair to Zerbinette." To answer to the coquettish, pert name of Zerbinette at the age of eighty-seven seems odd indeed, but when she entered the service of her foster-sister, the charming Marquise de Pont Brillant, seventy years before, as assistant hair-dresser, her retroussé nose, pert manner, big, roguish eyes, provoking smile, trim waist, small foot, and dimpled hand richly entitled her to the sobriquet bestowed upon her at that time by the marquise, who, married direct from the convent at the age of sixteen, was already considerably more than flirtatious, and who, struck by her assistant hair-dresser's boldness of spirit and unusual adaptability for intrigue, soon made Zerbinette her chief maid and confidante. Heaven only knows the good times and larks of every sort this pair had enjoyed in their palmy days, and the devotion, presence of mind, and fertility of resource Zerbinette had displayed in assisting her mistress to deceive the three or four lovers she had had at one time.