So, as she was about to pass me with a little curtsy and a pretty smile, I stopped her.
"Mademoiselle," I said, and doffed my hat, "is it permitted to see the palace to-day?"
"No, Monsieur," she answered, "unless one is invited or has business of importance with the First Consul."
Now I have ever had great faith in woman's wit, and especially a Frenchwoman's, and it suddenly struck me if this one should prove as quick-witted as most of her kind, she would know how to secure my admission into the palace; and if she should prove as kindly disposed as I believed the sight of gold and a pleasant word might make her, then was my success assured.
"Mademoiselle," I said, and my manner was as deferential as it might have been to her mistress. "I am not invited, and I have no business of importance with the First Consul; but I am from America, and it would please me greatly to see the rooms where the famous general lives. Cannot Mademoiselle think of a way?" and I slipped into her hand a louis d'or.
She curtsied again and smiled again, and then she answered:
"It is difficult, Monsieur, but I have a friend on guard in the upper corridor. If I can arrange with him to let us pass, I can show Monsieur the grand salon, the little salon, and the state dining-room. Would that please Monsieur?"
"Vastly," I answered, for though it might not be seeing all I would like to see, it would be doing something to while away the tedium of waiting, and there seemed a little of the spice of adventure about it that pleased my restless spirit.
"I will go and consult Gaston," said Mademoiselle Félice (for that, she told me, was her pretty name, and I took it as a felicitous omen), "and I will return in five minutes. If Monsieur will await me by the pines, he will not have to wait long."
Yet it seemed long. I am sure many five minutes had passed, and I had begun to think I would never see again either my gold piece or my pretty Félice, when she came tripping up in an entirely different direction from the one in which she had left me.