“I thought she would,” cried the young Count, “and when I kneel and lay my love at her feet, she will accept me and make me the happiest of men.”
“Be not too confident,” said Pascal; “she is young and wilful. You know the Batistellis are a determined race. I did not try to plead your cause. I am not used to love-making, and I felt that I should injure your prospects if I spoke in your behalf. But I warn you that you must use your eloquence and not appear too confident at the first.”
The Count laughed. It was not an honest, sincere laugh. A good judge of human nature would have detected in it a hollow sound—more of mockery than of true passion.
“One can see by looking at you, Pascal, that you are not an Adonis. You are not to blame if you have not the graces of Apollo. I have not descended from the ancient gods of Greece, but I have had an experience which even they might envy. I have run the gamut of Parisian society from the ante-chamber of royalty to the gutter, and in Paris there are beauties to be found even in the gutter.”
“I would not tell Vivienne that,” suggested Pascal.
“Of course not,” said the Count; “she is young and inexperienced and would not understand.”
“She might not understand,” said Pascal, “but on the other hand she might imagine more than the truth, and that would be fatal to your prospects, for I warn you, Count, that she is a woman who will not marry a man she does not love, and she will insist that he love her and her only.”
Again the Count laughed. “Why, even the King of France cannot command so much as that. I suppose I must bury the past. She is worth it. By the way, my dear Pascal, I think you told me that in case she marries me before her eighteenth birthday, the estates go with her.”
“My father made a most foolish will,” said Pascal, guardedly.
“That is what troubles me,” said the Count. “I feel like a robber; as though I had placed a pistol at your head and said, ‘Pascal Batistelli, give me your sister and your estates or you are a dead man.’” Then he added, after a moment’s thought: “I do not think that I can do it, after all. I think I shall go back to Paris.”