"In truth," said he, "I don't know. I can't understand myself."
"Oh, they are very cunning! Ah, messieurs, you choose to make war on women! What's this I have heard? They showed you, in place of the younger princess, a maid of honor, a chambermaid, a log of wood—what was it?"
Canolles felt the fever rising from his trembling fingers to his confused brain.
"I thought it was the princess," he said; "I didn't know her."
"Who was it, pray?"
"A maid of honor, I think."
"Ah, my poor boy! it's that traitor Mazarin's fault. What the devil! when a man is sent upon a delicate mission like that, they should give him a portrait. If you had had or seen a portrait of Madame la Princesse, you would certainly have recognized her. But let us say no more about it. Do you know that that awful Mazarin, on the pretext that you had betrayed the king, wanted to throw you to the toads?"
"I suspected as much."
"But I said: 'Let's throw him to the Nanons.' Did I do well? Tell me!"
Preoccupied as he was with the memory of the viscountess, and although he wore the viscountess's portrait upon his heart, Canolles could not resist the bewitching tenderness, the charming wit that sparkled in the loveliest eyes in the world; he stooped and pressed his lips upon the pretty hand which was offered him.