“My dear child,” said the Duc de Grandlieu to her at last, the aside being ended, “do be good! Come, now,” and he took Diane’s hands, “observe the proprieties of life, do not compromise yourself any more, write no letters. Letters, my dear, have caused as much private woe as public mischief. What might be excusable in a girl like Clotilde, in love for the first time, had no excuse in——”
“An old soldier who has been under fire,” said Diane with a pout.
This grimace and the Duchess’ jest brought a smile to the face of the two much-troubled Dukes, and of the pious Duchess herself.
“But for four years I have never written a billet-doux.—Are we saved?” asked Diane, who hid her curiosity under this childishness.
“Not yet,” said the Duc de Chaulieu. “You have no notion how difficult it is to do an arbitrary thing. In a constitutional king it is what infidelity is in a wife: it is adultery.”
“The fascinating sin,” said the Duc de Grandlieu.
“Forbidden fruit!” said Diane, smiling. “Oh! how I wish I were the Government, for I have none of that fruit left—I have eaten it all.”
“Oh! my dear, my dear!” said the elder Duchess, “you really go too far.”
The two Dukes, hearing a coach stop at the door with the clatter of horses checked in full gallop, bowed to the ladies and left them, going into the Duc de Grandlieu’s study, whither came the gentleman from the Rue Honore-Chevalier—no less a man than the chief of the King’s private police, the obscure but puissant Corentin.
“Go on,” said the Duc de Grandlieu; “go first, Monsieur de Saint-Denis.”