“More than I can say, Monsieur; my Lisa is there, and she is longing to see her poor old uncle again. Yes, Monsieur, glad shall I be to see Capello again. I was born and reared close by—” He stopped; I knew that he meant Castle Haret.
In the garden sat Madame Riano and Francezka. Madame Riano had on her head a great hat with a thousand black plumes on it, and she clutched her huge fan menacingly at my approach, although I must say she had ever treated me with condescension. I think she reserved her fire for great guns, like Count Saxe and the pope.
Francezka looked cheerful and even gay. She was by no means steady in that sad condition of mind in which I had found her the night of the rout. But it seemed to me an evil sign to find her always brightening at the prospect of a change, showing thereby that nothing suited her. I remember she wore a pale flowered silk, with sleeves that fell back from her elbow, and she, too, had a hat on, but it might have been worn by one of Watteau’s shepherdesses. Both the ladies gave me kindly greeting. Madame Riano began to ask me something about Chambord.
“I suppose Count Saxe will have forty or fifty of his ladies there this bout,” remarked this terrible old Scotch woman.
I replied respectfully that I did not understand her allusion.
“Fudge!” she cried; “you are an infant, forsooth! 425 You know less about Maurice of Saxe than any man in Paris, I warrant.”
Francezka’s laughing arch glance showed me that I could expect no help in that quarter, so I prepared to defend myself.
“Madame, you are quite right,” I replied. “I do know less than any man on this planet about Count Saxe and the ladies.”
“You would not be the better for such information,” tartly responded Madame Riano. “He will run after anything in petticoats, a milliner’s apprentice or the queen’s sister, it is all one to that Maurice of Saxe.”
“Madame,” said I, rising, “I perceive there is a dampness in this garden. I do not look like a delicate flower, but I am and I feel myself obliged to leave.”