"What might it be?" asked Madame de Cambes, uneasily, for the baron's tone indicated that he was planning to take revenge upon her.
"To grant me the same favor that I have received from the prince your son."
The viscountess was fairly caught. It was impossible to refuse an officer in the king's service the formal favor he thus solicited in public, and Madame de Cambes extended her trembling hand to Canolles.
He walked toward the bed as he might have walked toward the throne of a queen, took by the ends of the fingers the hand that was held out to him, knelt upon one knee, and imprinted upon the soft, white, trembling flesh a long kiss, which all the bystanders attributed to profound respect, and which the viscountess alone recognized as the equivalent of an ardent loving embrace.
"You promised me, you swore, indeed," said Canolles in an undertone, as he rose, "not to leave the château without informing me. I rely upon your promise and your oath."
"You may rely upon them, monsieur," said Claire, falling back upon her pillow, almost in a swoon.
Canolles, through whose whole being her tone sent a thrill of joy, tried to read in his fair prisoner's eyes confirmation of the hope her tone gave him. But those eyes were hermetically closed.
Canolles reflected that locked caskets are the ones which contain the most precious treasures, and he left the room with paradise in his heart.
To tell how our gentleman passed that night; to tell how his sleep and his waking were one long dream, during which he lived over and over again in his mind all the details of the chimerical adventure which had placed in his keeping the most precious treasure that a miser could ever hide away beneath the wings of his heart; to tell of the plans he devised for making the future subservient to the needs of his love and the whims of his imagination; to set forth the arguments that he used to convince himself that he was doing what he ought,—would be an utter impossibility; for folly is a wearisome thing to any other mind than a fool's.