Part 98 (1/2)
”Go on, marquise.”
”'M. Colbert,' she added, 'came to me two hours ago, to inform me he was appointed intendant.'”
”I have already told you, marquise, that M. Colbert would only be the more in my power for that.”
”Yes, but that is not all: Marguerite is intimate, as you know, with Madame d'Eymeris and Madame Lyodot.”
”I know it.”
”Well, M. Colbert put many questions to her, relative to the fortunes of these two gentlemen, and as to the devotion they had for you.”
”Oh, as to those two, I can answer for them; they must be killed before they will cease to be mine.”
”Then, as Madame Vanel was obliged to quit M. Colbert for an instant to receive a visitor, and as M. Colbert is industrious, scarcely was the new intendant left alone, before he took a pencil from his pocket, and, there was paper on the table, began to make notes.”
”Notes concerning d'Eymeris and Lyodot?”
”Exactly.”
”I should like to know what those notes were about.”
”And that is just what I have brought you.”
”Madame Vanel has taken Colbert's notes and sent them to me?”
”No; but by a chance which resembles a miracle, she has a duplicate of those notes.”
”How could she get that?”
”Listen; I told you that Colbert found paper on the table.”
”Yes.”
”That he took a pencil from his pocket.”
”Yes.”
”And wrote upon that paper.”
”Yes.”
”Well, this pencil was a lead-pencil, consequently hard; so, it marked in black upon the first sheet, and in white upon the second.”
”Go on.”
”Colbert, when tearing off the first sheet, took no notice of the second.”
”Well?”
”Well, on the second was to be read what had been written on the first; Madame Vanel read it, and sent for me.”