“Oh! nonsense; if I paid you the whole amount to-morrow, you would hardly know what to do with it.”
“There are two of us, monseigneur.”
“Well, you will receive 500,000 francs every four months. That ought to satisfy you.”
“Monseigneur forgets that these diamonds do not belong to us; if they did, we should be rich enough to wait; they belong to a dozen different creditors. We got some from Hamburg, some from Naples, one at Buenos Ayres, and one at Moscow. All these people wait for the sale of the necklace to be paid. The profit that we make is all that will be ours; and we have already had it two years on hand.”
M. de Rohan interrupted him. “After all,” said he, “I have not seen the necklace.”
“True, monseigneur; here it is.”
“It is really superb,” cried the cardinal; “it is a bargain?”
“Yes, monseigneur. I must go to the ambassador and excuse myself.”
“I did not think there was a Portuguese ambassador just now.”
“M. de Souza arrived incognito.”