"Impossible! You are wasting my time, my good Coigni; I have hundreds to see to-day."
"Not for your daughter's sake?"
"My daughter?"
"Yes; didn't you know? You remember Henriette, her great friend?"
"Yes, yes—little Henriette Dessy, the milliner," assented M. Durand with vast condescension. "A pretty wench; she was at the Ursulines convent school with my daughter; they have remained great friends ever since. What about little Henriette?"
"Mlle. Henriette is my fiancée," quoth the other eagerly, "and I thought——"
"Your fiancée? Little Henriette Dessy?" said M. Durand gaily. "Pardieu my good Coigni, why did you not tell me so before? My daughter is very fond of Henriette—a pretty minx, par ma foi! Hé! hé!"
"You are very kind, M. Durand."
"Mais non, mais non," said the great man, with much affability; "one is always ready to oblige a friend. Hé, now! give me your hand, friend Coigni. Shoot your rubbish along—quoi!—your Maréchal; he may pass this way. Anything one can do to oblige a friend."
With the affairs of M. le Maréchal de Coigni the present chronicle hath no further concern; but we know that some ten minutes later on this same August 13, 1746, he succeeded in being present at the petit lever of M. le Contrôleur-Général des Finances. Once within the secret precincts of the bedchamber he, like so many other petitioners and courtiers, was duly confronted by the stony stare of M. Achille, and found himself face to face with an enormous bedstead of delicately painted satinwood and ormulu mounts, draped with heavy azure silk curtains which hung down from a gilded baldachin, the whole a masterpiece of the furniture-maker's art.