"What! Mademoiselle Marguerite, she is a reality indeed—sensible, handsome, courageous, charitable, an angel for one in her station; but then," here M. Perigord shrugged his shoulders, "she knows well that the rank of monsieur our young marquis forbids the thought of her aspiring to his hand. Ah, no! you deceive yourself, my friend, but you cannot deceive me in such a matter."
"Indeed," replied the other, sarcastically; "and what should you say if I tell you that she has won monsieur's heart already, and that he has offered her his hand? Yes," he added, observing the effect which his words produced even on the stolid countenance of the major-domo. "Yes, and what would you say if I told you that madame the baroness, who had set her heart on the union of the cousins, has discovered all this and has appealed to monsieur the marquis himself about it?"
Monsieur Perigord could only stare at the speaker in amazement, while, strange to say, M. Boulederouloue, with whom astonishment was an habitual and chronic state, was able to exclaim, "The world is coming to an end!"
"Absurd, ridiculous, preposterous, impossible!" cried Perigord at last, with a vehement sweep of his hand which sent a decanter and a couple of wine glasses flying off the table. "Monsieur Jasmin, your powers of invention are wonderful indeed, but I am not such a fool as to believe all this. How could you know it even if it were all true? Answer me that, my friend—answer me that!"
"But I am fool enough to believe what I know to be true," retorted the valet, forgetting his habitual caution in his irritation at M. Perigord's incredulity. "And if you wish to know how I learnt all this, permit me to inform you that madame the baroness herself was so obliging as to make me acquainted with it at interviews with which she favoured me. I can tell you more," he added, provoked by the scornful smile with which M. Perigord received these last words, and thereupon he gave forth, with a volubility that would have done no discredit to old Perigord himself, a tolerably full account of all he knew or had gathered from others respecting the affair, concluding with a supercilious intimation that he had now at madame's request taken the matter in hand, and would soon set all to rights.
"Ah, no doubt—no doubt! Madame could not have chosen a more able person for the business," cried M. Perigord, suppressing the indignation that boiled within him by an effort which could scarcely have deceived the wily valet had he been sober. "I was a fool indeed to suppose that my good friend could be mistaken in his surmises; but then I could not know that he was honoured with the confidence of madame the baroness. And yet it is a weighty matter—a maze of difficulties, a labyrinth of conflicting circumstances. If Mademoiselle Clotilde does not care for Monsieur Isidore after all, and he loves Mademoiselle Marguerite, and has actually plighted his word to her, what master-stroke of policy can even the genius of M. Jasmin devise to overcome such obstacles?"
The valet's wits were too blunted to detect the irony, but he drank in the flattery as he sipped his wine. "Bah!" replied he, "our young master can have his choice between a union with Mademoiselle Clotilde or a lettre de cachet; and as for pretty Mademoiselle Lacroix, as she has no particular home of her own, she ought to be grateful if we find her one in some convent where the lady superior is not too fond of letting her protégées gad abroad—you understand?"
"Yes; but what if she should appeal to the baron, who, as we know, pledged himself to protect the poor orphan, and should refuse to permit her to go just wherever she is bid?" As he spoke these words M. Perigord clutched the chair in which he sat as if to keep himself steady, whilst a nervous twitching seemed to convulse his lilliputian frame.
"Oh, leave that to me," rejoined the valet; "I warrant you I'll find a way when the time comes, and that will very likely be no further off than to-morrow, to tempt the silly little bird into the snare of the fowler." Saying this, the valet rose as if to depart, but at the same moment the fiery little king of the kitchen bounded from his chair, sprang at him, and seized him by the throat, exclaiming—
"Traitor! miscreant! Is this your duty, faith, and loyalty to your young master? If all men had their due your false and cowardly heart should be torn out of your bosom for daring thus to plot against a noble and beautiful young lady, whom one would think even the meanest would feel bound to help and protect."