Le Gardeur and Cadet did not rise like the rest, but kept their seats. Cadet swore that De Pean had spoiled a jolly evening by inviting the women to the Palace.
These women had been invited by De Pean to give zest to the wild orgie that was intended to prepare Le Gardeur for their plot of to-morrow, which was to compass the fall of the Bourgeois. They sat down with the gentlemen, listening with peals of laughter to their coarse jests, and tempting them to wilder follies. They drank, they sang, they danced and conducted, or misconducted, themselves in such a thoroughly shameless fashion that Bigot, Varin, and other experts of the Court swore that the petits appartements of Versailles, or even the royal fêtes of the Parc aux cerfs, could not surpass the high life and jollity of the Palace of the Intendant.
In that wild fashion Bigot had passed the night previous to his present visit to Angélique. The Chevalier de Pean rode the length of the Grande Allée and returned. The valet and horse of the Intendant were still waiting at the door, and De Pean saw Bigot and Angélique still seated at the window engaged in a lively conversation, and not apparently noticing his presence in the street as he sat pulling hairs out of the mane of his horse, “with the air of a man in love,” as Angélique laughingly remarked to Bigot.
Her quick eye, which nothing could escape, had seen De Pean the first time he passed the house. She knew that he had come to visit her, and seeing the horse of the Intendant at the door, had forborne to enter,—that would not have been the way with Le Gardeur, she thought. He would have entered all the readier had even the Dauphin held her in conversation.
Angélique was woman enough to like best the bold gallant who carries the female heart by storm and puts the parleying garrison of denial to the sword, as the Sabine women admired the spirit of their Roman captors and became the most faithful of wives.
De Pean, clever and unprincipled, was a menial in his soul, as cringing to his superiors as he was arrogant to those below him.
“Fellow!” said he to Bigot's groom, “how long has the Intendant been here?”
“All the afternoon, Chevalier,” replied the man, respectfully uncovering his head.
“Hum! and have they sat at the window all the time?”
“I have no eyes to watch my master,” replied the groom; “I do not know.”