A moment after, Richelieu said to his friend: “Follow me, without seeming to do so.”
“Where?”
“Never mind—come, all the same.”
The duke set off and Taverney followed within twenty paces to a room where the following gentleman stopped in the anteroom.
He had not long to wait there. Richelieu, having asked the royal valet for what his master had left on the toilet table, came forth immediately with an article which the baron could not distinguish in its silken wrapper. But the marshal soon drew him out of his disquiet when he led him to the side of the gallery.
“Baron, you have sometimes doubted my friendship for you,” observed the duke when they were alone, “and then you doubted the good fortune of yourself and children. You were wrong, for it has come about for you all with dazzling rapidity.”
“You don’t say that?” said the old cynic, catching a glimpse of part of the truth; he was not yet sundered from good and hence not entirely enlisted by the devil. “How is this?”
“Well, we have Master Philip made a captain with a company of soldiers furnished by the King. And Mdlle. de Taverney is nigh to being a marchioness.”
“Go to! my daughter a—— ”
“Listen to me, Taverney: the King is full of good taste. When talent accompanies grace, beauty and virtue, it enchants him. Now, your girl unites all these gifts in an eminent degree so that he is delighted by her.”