"Oh, 'tis more likely that the Count de Mailly's flavor would be rather cloying. All love is sweet; but his is so really violent, gentlemen, that—"
"For a month after you would sicken with the mere thought of a rissole," cried the Duke from the threshold.
"And the epitaph which you would place over my picked bones," said Claude, from behind Richelieu's shoulder, "would be:
Sa chair, même, étant douce comme miel,
Sa nature était aussi belle.
Il entra dans la vie réelle."
"Bravo! Claude. We will forgive the lost feet. You have purchased pardon," cried d'Holbach, smiling. He and de Mailly-Nesle, Claude's cousin and the brother of Mme. de Châteauroux, went forward to greet the late-comers. D'Holbach, epicurean philosopher, and host of the small company, gave them a genial welcome. The Marquis grasped his cousin's hands, and bowed familiarly to the Duke, while the other two men in the room, d'Epernon and de Gêvres, boon companions, both intimates of the King, the one an amateur physician, the other an adept at embroidery, remained languidly seated, deigning a nod and smile to the last arrivals.
After a few further words of greeting and explanation, the party of six arranged themselves about the oval table, on which were already placed the hors-d'œuvres and sweet wines, while Cressin hurried away towards his kitchens to command the attendance of two waiters and the first course of the supper. Only part of the evening's entertainment was being given by the Baron d'Holbach. M. de Gêvres had arranged an amusement for the night which promised some novelty even to these utterly blasé gentlemen. He proposed conducting his friends across the river to his hôtel, which, by royal permission, had, very conveniently for his pocket, been turned into a public gambling-house. Its redoubtable owner, when not at Versailles, lived in exquisite style in his château at St. Ouen; and, since there was always a place for him in the Tuileries, the Hôtel Richelieu, or, more covertly, the Hôtel de Sauvré, in Paris, he had not yet felt any poignant discomfort through the loss of his ancestral house. On the contrary, the unique pleasure of appearing in its familiar rooms furnished with the rows of tables, frequented by bourgeois and dwellers in St. Antoine, with the presence of an occasional petty noble, was really very refreshing to the jaded spirit of this vaporish child of highest France.
It was a particularly select little company who gathered about the table in the private salon of the Café Procope on this stormy night. All of them were of the bluest of blood; all of them spent the greater part of their time about the person of the King; to all, the doors of any and every house or salon in Paris were open at any hour; and not one of them but had had hearts flung at him from the night of his first appearance in the Gallery of Mirrors to the present moment, when interest in the hors-d'œuvres was beginning to wane, and the first course of the supper should have been making its appearance. D'Epernon had commenced to bore them all with some remarks upon the recent blood-letting of his Majesty after a rout at Choisy, when Claude jumped unceremoniously from the table, crossed the room to a mirror, and took out his patchbox.
"Trust you'll have no women to-night, de Gêvres," he remarked, breaking in upon d'Epernon. "I am wet through. My wig is in strings, and the powder has melted away like—like snow in June. While my boots"—taking out a large star and pasting it below the corner of his left eye—"my boots will not be fit for my valet, when we return to-night."
"Claude is standing there, my lords, aching with vanity to have me relate to you how crazily he has borne himself to-day. Ciel! 'Twould be driving me mad with anxiety to learn how soon I should be registering my presence at the Bastille, had I shown myself so little of a courtier, so utterly reckless for the sake of madame's admiration as has he."
Before any one had time to voice his curiosity, Claude turned quickly from the mirror. "The Bastille, Richelieu! The Bastille! Surely—"