"Yes--pig! And so, open. If not--I'll break in the gate." "Then pass me the letter through the wicket, and hurry about it. Else I shall go in and leave you as you are." "Mule! Isn't he stubborn, that animal!" grumbled the lackey as he shoved the letter through the grating. "I must have an answer, good and quick, I was told," he added. "When I have read the letter," replied Samuel. "To make me wait outside the door--like a dog!" muttered the tipsy servingman. "Me, the first lackey of my lord!" Samuel, without paying the least attention to the impertinences of the lackey, read the letter of the Count of Plouernel by the light of his lamp, and then answered: "Say to your master that I shall visit him to-morrow morning at his rooms. Your errand is done. You may leave." "You won't give me a written answer?" "No, the reply I have just given you will suffice." Leaving the valet outside to fume his wrath away, Samuel refastened the wicket and returned to the room where he had left his wife. Bathsheba said to him, with some uneasiness: "My friend, did I not hear a threatening voice?" "It was a drunken lackey who brought me a letter from the Count of Plouernel." "Another demand for a loan, I suppose?" "Exactly. He has ordered me to undertake to secure for him the sum of 100,000 livres. He did not call on me direct for the loan, because he thought me too poor to be able to furnish it." "Will you lend him the money, my friend?" "Surely, on excellent securities of thirty deniers to one. The Count is good for it, and it will please me to squeeze him, along with other great seigneurs, to the profit of the strong-box of the Voyants." Hardly had Samuel uttered these words when Prince Franz of Gerolstein, accompanied by one single companion, entered the room. Samuel and his wife silently passed upstairs to the floor above, leaving the two alone. Franz of Gerolstein, then at the age of twenty-five, tall of stature and at once graceful and robust, presented an appearance both noble and impressive. In his face could be read frankness, resolution, and generosity. He was simply dressed. His companion, who was evidently a woman disguised in male habiliments, seemed as young as he, though she was really thirty. In spite of their rare beauty, her features bore the stamp of virility. Her figure was tall and lithe; a brownish down marked strongly her upper lip; everything harmonized with her masculine garments. Yet the beauty of this woman was of a sinister character. The marble-like pallor of her brow, the flashes of her black eyes, the contraction of her pupils, the bitterness of the smile, frequently cruel, which curled on her lips--all seemed to bear witness to the ravages of passion or to some incurable chagrin. She seemed either a superb courtesan, or a repentant Magdalen. Neither Franz nor his companion broke the silence of the lower room for an instant. The Prince spoke first, in a voice grave and almost solemn: