“Paradise!” echoed every one included in the little circle.
“Can a man be called Paradise?” asked Madame Herbelot, who had joined her sister-in-law.
“It tends to prove,” continued the notary, “that the master is an angel; for when his tiger follows him—you understand.”
“It is the road of Paradise! very good, that,” said Madame Marion, anxious to flatter Achille Pigoult in the interests of her nephew.
“Monsieur,” said Antonin’s valet in the dining-room, “the tilbury has a coat of arms—”
“Coat of arms!”
“Yes, and droll enough they are! There’s a coronet with nine points and pearls—”
“Then he’s a count!”
“And a monster with wings, flying like a postilion who has dropped something. And here is what is written on the belt,” added the man, taking a paper from his pocket. “Mademoiselle Anicette, the Princesse de Cadignan’s lady’s maid, who came in a carriage” (the Cinq-Cygne carriage before the door of the Mulet!) “to bring a letter to the gentleman, wrote it down for me.”
“Give it to me.”