"The matter was not of great importance. However, I thought that it might please you to learn that Mme. de Châteauroux is likely soon to be reinstated. This afternoon his Majesty was good enough to talk with me freely en tête-à-tête. He misses the Duchess very much. He is preparing, quietly, to place her at her post again. She is your friend. I thought that it might give you pleasure to know. Of course, what I have told must not be repeated."
"Thank you, Jules. I am very glad. Marie has been my good friend always."
"It was she, I believe, who presented to you M. de Bernis?"
"Yes," replied Victorine, looking up at him in surprise.
There was a pause. De Coigny should have been making his departure. Yet still he stood there, as awkwardly as possible, half turned from his wife, who sat regarding him in some astonishment, and without the desire to say a word. The marshal's head drooped a little. He put one hand to his forehead, and seemed to be going through an inward struggle. Several moments passed. Madame moved restlessly. Finally she said:
"What is it, Jules? What have you further to say to me?"
Coigny shook his head and passed his hand over his eyes. "It is immaterial, Victorine. I have already said it once. I will not repeat myself. It is—immaterial, I say. Good-afternoon."
"Good-afternoon."
And thus it was to the vague relief of the woman that he left her there, in her small salon, alone.
The first part of the foregoing conversation might have proved very serviceable, at this time, to the Abbé de Bernis. He was not, however, so fortunate as even to chance upon the idea of such a thing as the reinstallation of la Châteauroux. As he drove towards Paris he continued his meditations on the topic which had occupied him all day. They had now taken a surer trend. One doubtful possibility was done away with. He found himself left with two others, less dubious, but, had he the wit to surmise it, possibilities which half the men of the Court were quietly planning, even as he himself, to make their own.