"Touquet adopted a child? Hang it! that surprises me."
"I was very sure, monseigneur, that you were ignorant of the circumstance."
"There's something mysterious about it."
"Very extraordinary. No one would guard a girl so closely unless he were keeping her for himself."
"What is this girl like?"
"She's an angel, monseigneur, divinely beautiful, an enchantress; hardly sixteen years of age, with the figure of a nymph, and Touquet spreads it abroad that she is ugly and ill-made, that there is nothing pleasing about her. He has even ordered me to tell it all about. If I have seen young Blanche it's only because the barber, wishing to have her taught music, was obliged to introduce me into her room, which she never leaves."
"This is all very singular," said the marquis, "and you pique my curiosity."
"Good! I shall have a hundred pistoles," said Chaudoreille to himself, "that's much better than the two golden crowns which the barber promised me, to say nothing of the honor of acting as the Marquis of Villebelle's business man."
"And you say it's not because he is in love with her himself that he hides this young girl," resumed the marquis, after a moment.
"No, monseigneur, for a few days from now he is about to marry her."