The letter contained these words: "You are twenty years old, young, handsome, noble, brilliant, and charming; you have enough money to be extravagant. Your future is in your own hands . . . we shall see if the counsels we have given you for a year will continue to bear fruit . . . we shall write to you no more . . . you have free liberty . . . but you be followed everywhere. In four years from this time, whether or not your conduct equals our expectations, you will receive a letter . . . Henceforth, then, hope and persevere . . ."
During a month the Marquis was almost devoured by curiosity. He walked the streets like a crazy person, looking anxiously at all the blue eyes he met, and comparing them with his ring; many beautiful blue eyes timidly fell before his ardent and restless gaze; others responded languidly, others angrily, but he discovered nothing.
He remembered that he had been requested to deposit his titles in the archives, in order that he might be received at court; he fulfilled the necessary formalities, and waited the return of one of his distant relatives, the Count of Appreville, to have the honor of being presented to King Louis XV.
[CHAPTER V]
THE CAVALIER
One day, the Marquis was sauntering by the banks of the grand canal, at Versailles, in melancholy meditation, and thinking, sadly, that he had been abandoned by his mysterious protectress. He had come from the riding-school, and his riding costume set off wonderfully the elegance of his figure. It consisted of a green coat trimmed with rich gold lace, scarlet breeches, a vest of the same color, and high boots of shining black morocco, the tops of which hung loosely upon knee-pieces of fine cambric. At a little distance from him, Létorière saw a middle-aged horseman, who was vainly striving to make his beast pass a marble pedestal.
Two persons witnessed this contest; one, a man of fifty to sixty years, dressed in a coat of pearl-gray taffeta and silk small-clothes of the same color, had a countenance at once handsome, noble, and benevolent. He leaned on the arm of an older man, quite small, slightly stooping, superbly dressed in the old fashion of the Regency, and whose pale face was furrowed with deep wrinkles.
The more simply dressed of the two said to the other, pointing to Létorière:
"What a charming face! what a pretty figure! I never saw anything more enchanting. . . . Did you, marshal?"
"Hum . . . hum . . ." said the latter, with a dry cough; "that litt' gent'l'm'n? he's well 'nough . . . but he's as awkward as a sprinkler of holy water,"—answered the Duke de Richelieu, who had preserved the old vulgar manner of clipping his words, so much in vogue among the roués of the Regency. . .