“That alters the case,” said the president, smiling with secret satisfaction at being freed from the necessity of displeasing the king. “Clerk, you may remove your books—there is no more need of writing. The lady has preferred a form of process much more summary than ours. And you, Sir Marquis! What is your pleasure?” Saluzzo had too sincere a respect for his ungainly body to hazard it against Vieilleville. “I will marry no woman by constraint,” he muttered, “If she do not affect me, I can do without her.” As Vieilleville passed through the antechamber, one of the judges accosted him in a low voice. “You have saved yourself a six months’ work, worse than the corvée, by this wager of battle. The marquis had a list of forty interrogations for the lady, in which every word she ever spoke to himself or servants, every pressure of his hand, was enumerated.”
“Well,” said he “it is only a French woman who has outwitted a hundred Italians.”
“No,” pursued his informant, “it is your valour which has extricated her from an ugly scrape. Away, and celebrate the wedding; for I much misinterpret the looks of the prince and lady if that be not what you are driving at.”
[EDINBURGH LITERARY JOURNAL.]
