"Well, your Excellency, is this all you can remark?" he cried, whirling about as the strain threatened to become unbearable. "Has the father confessor nothing but the husks of literary comparison to offer?"
"Softly, my son. Another written communication will, in a moment, be with you. This time it will be a chit, a legitimate chit, in a bright new leather book."
"You are pleased to be enigmatic."
"Non,—you flatter. There should be no enigmas to a diplomat. This correspondent,—" here he waved the sheet airily,—"has been at work on his creation since the time of dawn. There are full three hours between his first ink and his last. Miss Onda, on the contrary, writes with ease and skill. Her letter of announcement went to Miss Todd. It will soon come to you."
"How, in God's name, do you think such things?" cried Pierre, in reluctant admiration.
"I seldom think them. They are obliging enough to come to me," said Ronsard, with a deprecating gesture, and sank back to an attitude of waiting.
Pierre stared on, half fascinated. There was something sphinx-like about the man,—a gelatinous sphinx, not quite congealed into certainty. Ronsard did not resent the stare. He met it once or twice, smiling, with slight twinkles, or, to be more accurate, slight blinks, of his small pale eyes. He looked now as if he might soon purr, like the cat.
"Ah," he murmured at length, with a slight upward gesture of one hand. "The servant-bell again. Your chit, Monsieur. A hundred francs upon it."
"Done," said Pierre. He too listened eagerly.
As they wait, in listening silence, the reader may as well be initiated into the mysteries of the "chit."