I shrugged my shoulders with disgust.
“He is a charlatan.”
“No,” she said, “he is the surgeon of the court pages. He has a fine intellect, I assure you; in fact, he is a writer, and a very learned man.”
“Heavens! if his style resembles his face!” I said scoffingly. “But who is the other?”
“What other?”
“That spruce, affected little popinjay over there, who looks as if he had been drinking verjuice.”
“He is a rather well-born man,” she replied; “just arrived from some province, I forget which—oh! from Artois. He is sent here to conclude an affair in which the Cardinal de Rohan is interested, and his Eminence in person had just presented him to Monsieur de Saint-James. It seems they have both chosen my husband as arbitrator. The provincial didn’t show his wisdom in that; but fancy what simpletons the people who sent him here must be to trust a case to a man of his sort! He is as meek as a sheep and as timid as a girl. His Eminence is very kind to him.”
“What is the nature of the affair?”
“Oh! a question of three hundred thousand francs.”
“Then the man is a lawyer?” I said, with a slight shrug.