“If the count dined at Gondreville we shall soon know all about him,” remarked Cecile; “for my grandpapa is going there to-morrow morning.”
“What will strike you as very strange,” said Antonin Goulard, “is that the party at Cinq-Cygne have just sent Mademoiselle Anicette, the maid of the Princesse de Cadignan, in the Cinq-Cygne carriage, with a note to the stranger, and he is going now to pass the night there.”
“Ah ca!” said Olivier Vinet, “then he is not a man; he’s a devil, a phoenix, he will poculate—”
“Ah, fie! monsieur,” said Madame Mollot, “you use words that are really—”
“‘Poculate’ is a word of the highest latinity, madame,” replied Vinet, gravely. “So, as I said, he will poculate with Louis Philippe in the morning, and banquet at the Holy-Rood with Charles the Tenth at night. There is but one reason that allows a decent man to go to both camps—from Montague to Capulet! Ha, ha! I know who that stranger is. He’s—”
“The president of a railway from Paris to Lyons, or Paris to Dijon, or from Montereau to Troyes.”
“That’s true,” said Antonin. “You have it. There’s nothing but speculation that is welcomed everywhere.”
“Yes, just see how great names, great families, the old and the new peerage are rushing hot-foot into enterprises and partnerships,” said Achille Pigoult.
“Francs attract the Franks,” remarked Olivier Vinet, without a smile.
“You are not an olive-branch of peace,” said Madame Mollot, laughing.