“It is impossible!” he murmured in French.
“What is impossible?” asked Madame de la Motte, who seized eagerly on these few words she could understand.
“Nothing, madame, nothing!”
“Really, cardinal, you are making me play but a sorry part,” said she, withdrawing her arm angrily.
He did not even seem to notice it, so great was his preoccupation with the German lady.
“Madame,” said he to her, “these words that your companion has repeated to me in your name are some German lines which I read in a house which is perhaps known to you.”
The blue domino pressed Oliva’s arm, who thereupon bowed an assent.
“That house,” said the cardinal, hesitatingly, “is it not called Schoenbrunn?”
She again made a gesture of assent.
“They were written on a table of cherry-wood, with a gold bodkin, by an august hand.”