The other guests of M. d'Harville now arrived, when Joseph entered, and said a few words in a low voice to his master.
"Gentlemen," said the marquis, "will you allow me?—it is my wife's jeweller, who has brought some diamonds to select for her,—a surprise. You understand that, Lucenay? We are husbands of the old sort, you and I."
"Ah, pardieu! If it is a surprise you mean," shouted the duke, "my wife gave me one yesterday, and a famous one too!"
"She asked me for a hundred thousand francs (4,000l.)."
"And you are such a magnifico—you—"
"Lent them to her; they are advanced as mortgage on her Arnouville estate. Right reckonings make good friends,—but that's by the by. To lend in two hours a hundred thousand francs to a friend who requires that sum is what I call pretty, but rare. Is it not prodigal, you who are a connoisseur in loans?" said the duke, laughingly, to Saint-Remy, little thinking of the cutting purport of his words.
In spite of his effrontery, the viscount blushed slightly, and then replied, with composure:
"A hundred thousand francs?—that is immense! What could a woman ever want with such a sum as a hundred thousand francs? As for us men, that is quite a different matter."
"Ma foi! I really do not know what she could want with such a sum as that. But that's not my affair. Some arrears for the toilet, probably? The tradespeople hungry and annoying,—that's her affair. And, as you know very well, my dear Saint-Remy, that, as it was I who lent my wife the money, it would have been in the worst possible taste in me to have inquired the purpose for which she required it."