"Ah! madame, I never would have sent Giovanni to fight with another man!"
"Poor fool! do you know what you would have done if you had seen your lover desert you for a rival?—But let us talk no more of the past! It is for the purpose of atoning for it that I wish to send a message to Léodgard. I wish it to be placed in his own hands. You cannot take charge of it, because you are known to that bath keeper's daughter, the noble countess's close friend; she would insist upon taking the letter, she might inform her friend, and then they would divine from whom you came."
"Oh, yes, madame! for I told her that I was still with you; and if monsieur le comte has admitted having fought a duel with monsieur le marquis, they would think, if I should carry a letter there, that another duel was in contemplation, and they would be quite capable of not giving it to the count."
"That is why I do not wish to intrust it to you. The little solicitor's clerk will do the errand perfectly. Go, Miretta, and find him. But he cannot come again to this house, where he was beaten. Make an appointment with him in some solitary, out-of-the-way place, and I will meet him there. Thank heaven! Monsieur de Santoval has ceased to be jealous since that duel. He leaves me entirely free. Go, then, find this Bahuchet, promise him money, much money; I know that he is not to be relied on without that."
Miretta lost no time in going to Maître Bourdinard's office; she knew the way very well.
But when she entered the dirty, smoke-begrimed room where Bahuchet and his friend usually sat, she was surprised to find new faces in the places of those which she was accustomed to see there.
"What do you wish, young woman?" asked an old fellow as yellow as parchment, as he saw the girl gazing around the room.
"I wish to see Monsieur Bahuchet."
"Master Bahuchet is not here."
"Oh! he has gone out; at what hour will he return, if you please?"