“Is he coming for Mademoiselle de La Bastie?” asked La Briere, coloring.
“So it appears, monsieur.”
“We are cheated!” cried Canalis looking at La Briere.
“Ah!” retorted Ernest quickly, “that is the first time you have said, ‘we’ since we left Paris: it has been ‘I’ all along.”
“You understood me,” cried Canalis, with a burst of laughter. “But we are not in a position to struggle against a ducal coronet, nor the duke’s title, nor against the waste lands which the Council of State have just granted, on my report, to the house of Herouville.”
“His grace,” said La Briere, with a spice of malice that was nevertheless serious, “will furnish you with compensation in the person of his sister.”
At this instant, the Comte de La Bastie was announced; the two young men rose at once, and La Briere hastened forward to present Canalis.
“I wished to return the visit that you paid me in Paris,” said the count to the young lawyer, “and I knew that by coming here I should have the double pleasure of greeting one of our great living poets.”
“Great!—Monsieur,” replied the poet, smiling, “no one can be great in a century prefaced by the reign of a Napoleon. We are a tribe of would-be great poets; besides, second-rate talent imitates genius nowadays, and renders real distinction impossible.”
“Is that the reason why you have thrown yourself into politics?” asked the count.