“Oh, Diane!” burst out the excellent and too truthful Madame Grandin, “you did no such thing. You only took the notion after you got here, and besides, you were never asked to supper before by a marquis.”
“I made the resolution in my own mind,” replied Diane suavely, who had never dreamed of such a thing in her life. “It is most kind of the Marquis, but I can make no exception.”
The Marquis protested, backed up not only by Madame Grandin, but by Grandin himself, who was listening attentively at the door behind the Marquis, and put out his head, grimacing and gesticulating wildly in protest to Diane. The Marquis saw it all in the little mirror, and burst out laughing, at which Grandin’s head suddenly disappeared. But Diane was relentless, and the Marquis had to leave, asking permission, however, to call again.
“You may call every day,” replied Madame Grandin. “My husband thinks it would be a very good thing for the show to have a marquis attentive to Diane. She is a perfectly good girl, I assure you. We made inquiries about her character before we engaged her.”
When the Marquis and François were out in the street and laughing together, François said:
“Beware of Diane! She is the most determined creature I ever saw in my life. If she makes up her mind to marry you, you are lost.”
François then walked off, taking his way past the Bishop’s palace, a shabby old stone house with wide iron gates before it. The Bishop was just coming out for his daily walk, and François, who was as bold with a bishop as with a rat-catcher, went up and said:
“I perceive your Grace does not recognise me. I am—or I was—François d’Artignac of the Chateau d’Artignac on the upper Loire.”
The Bishop, a gentle, unsophisticated man, overflowing with benevolence, shook hands cordially with François, saying:
“Ah, it is a great pleasure to me to meet one of your family, for I and my brother, General Bion, were both born and reared upon that estate where our father and our grandfather and our great-grandfathers for many generations back were laborers. We do not seek to disguise our humble origin, my brother and I. We were always well treated by the family of d’Artignac as far back as we can remember, and I am happy and proud to meet a representative of that family.”