“At last!” thought Celestine. “I don’t see how I should have got out of it if he had delayed much longer.”
“You do not know to what lengths my devotion can go,” said des Lupeaulx, rising. “You shall be invited to the first select party given by his Excellency’s wife.”
“Ah, you are an angel!” she cried. “And I see now how much you love me; you love me intelligently.”
“To-night, dear child,” he said, “I shall find out at the Opera what journalists are conspiring for Baudoyer, and we will measure swords together.”
“Yes, but you must dine with us, will you not? I have taken pains to get the things you like best—”
“All that is so like love,” said des Lupeaulx to himself as he went downstairs, “that I am willing to be deceived in that way for a long time. Well, if she IS tricking me I shall know it. I’ll set the cleverest of all traps before the appointment is fairly signed, and I’ll read her heart. Ah! my little cats, I know you! for, after all, women are just what we men are. Twenty-eight years old, virtuous, and living here in the rue Duphot!—a rare piece of luck and worth cultivating,” thought the elderly butterfly as he fluttered down the staircase.
“Good heavens! that man, without his glasses, must look funny enough in a dressing-gown!” thought Celestine, “but the harpoon is in his back and he’ll tow me where I want to go; I am sure now of that invitation. He has played his part in my comedy.”
When, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Rabourdin came home to dress for dinner, his wife presided at his toilet and presently laid before him the fatal memorandum which, like the slipper in the Arabian Nights, the luckless man was fated to meet at every turn.
“Who gave you that?” he asked, thunderstruck.
“Monsieur des Lupeaulx.”