"Monsieur La Mothe, were you ever at Valmy?"
"Yes, mademoiselle." There was no shadow of hesitation in the reply, though the abrupt change of subject was as startling as the question itself.
"Of course. Music opens all doors. Monsieur La Mothe, I congratulate you."
"That having been in Valmy I am now in Amboise?"
"Upon better than that. Some day I may tell you."
"But this is the best possible, and I congratulate myself. No! Good as this is, there is a better than the best! Mademoiselle——"
"But you sing as well as make verses, do you not—you, whose music opened the gates even of Valmy? Indeed, I heard you just now. You are another Orpheus, and Valmy a very similar interior. You don't like me to say so? Very well, my lute is in your hand, and I am waiting. Did they teach you in Poitou to keep ladies waiting?"
"Poitou?" repeated La Mothe; "but I never said I had been in Poitou."
"Oh! but as a minstrel you wander everywhere, or—what was it?—as a poor gentleman seeing France, and so to Poitou. Anjou, Guienne, anywhere would do as well—except Flanders, where Monsieur de Commines comes from, and where I wish Monsieur de Commines had remained," she added.
"You dislike Monsieur de Commines? Mademoiselle, if you knew him better; how I wish you did. There was once a friendless boy—"