“Has your Highness formed no opinion?”
The duke shrugged his shoulders, pettishly, wearifully.
“You smile, and hint, and shuffle round the truth, as if you would seek to have me understand it without compromise to yourself. Why the devil can’t you speak out?”
“What encouragement have I, when my motives are misconstrued into spite and jealousy? I was told once how this envious spirit of mine might get me into trouble. With deference, monseigneur, I think you sometimes hardly recognise your true friends.”
“Maybe, Charlot; and maybe I did you wrong. Only, if you are one and the best of them, as I do now incline to believe, in honesty speak out and prove it. Be candid as the day: I bid you; I beg you, Charlot my friend.”
“Well, then, I start on this: you sneer at my disinterestedness, as illustrated by this little affaire; but I will tell you I have a true passion for this girl; I desire to monopolise her affections; and yet I have bidden her so to contrive as that she shall fall under suspicion of an intrigue with the chevalier Tiretta.”
“O, just under suspicion? That will not harm you.”
“Monseigneur well knows that what is begun in play will often end in earnest. I risk that—and why? Out of devotion to your interests. Here is a case—which I will put so far specifically. A lover sends a friend to plead his cause for him—a mad thing to do, and the madder the more persuasive the friend. We know the proper advocate lives in his part; the cause is just worth him and no more; if he wins he takes the credit—and the fees. But supposing there are those among us who, having recognised the danger, are decided that the advocate must be foiled in his design at whatever cost. There is nothing for us then but so to brand his character that he will be forced to withdraw prematurely from the case. Your Highness smokes me?”
“Par exemple. That is where your little cocotte comes in.”
“That is where Fanchette comes in—and with what result as regards the subject of the real intrigue? Why that she learns at last with indignation that what is offered her is but the reversion of a passion she believed so single to herself; that a thirst she deemed divine is content to slake itself in the common ditch——”