"Take care, duke; that looks like constancy."
"No, madame, it is calculation."
"Ah! I see that you are on the road toward becoming devoted."
"I never do things by halves, madame."
"Well, we will follow your example, Monsieur le Duc. And now we have been an hour and a half away, and should, I think, return to the gardens, that our absence may not be too much noticed; besides, I think the Goddess of Night is on the shore, waiting to thank us for the preference we have given her over the sun."
"With your permission, however, madame," said Laval, "I must keep you an instant longer, to tell you the trouble I am in."
"Speak, count," replied the duchess; "what is the matter?"
"It is about our requests and our protestations. It was agreed, if you remember, that they should be printed by workmen who cannot read."
"Well."
"I bought a press, and established it in the cellar of a house behind the Val-de-Grace. I enlisted the necessary workmen, and, up to the present time, have had the most satisfactory results; but the noise of our machine has given rise to the suspicion that we were coining false money, and yesterday the police made a descent on the house; fortunately, there was time to stop the work and roll a bed over the trap, so that they discovered nothing. But as the visit might be renewed, and with a less fortunate result, as soon as they were gone I dismissed the workmen, buried the press, and had all the proofs taken to my own house."