Volume II Part 81 (1/2)
”And horses!”
”And good cheer! G.o.defroi, his cook, leaves here a hundred times better than when he came. My lord has given him excellent counsels-- has enormously refined him.”
”Besides, they say my lord is such a good player.”
”Admirable! Gaining large sums with even more indifference than he loses; and yet I have never seen any one lose more gallantly.”
”What is he going to do now?”
”Set out for Germany, in a good traveling carriage, with seven or eight thousand francs, which he knows how to get. Oh! I feel no embarra.s.sment about my lord: he is one who always falls on his feet, as they say.”
”And he has no more money to inherit?”
”None; for his father has only a small competency.”
”His father?”
”Certainly.”
”My lord's father is not dead?”
”He was not about five or six months since. We wrote to him for some family papers.”
”But he never comes here?”
”For a good reason. These fifteen years he has lived in the country, at Angers.”
”But my lord never goes to see him?”
”His father?”
”Yes.”
”Never, never--not he!”
”Have they quarreled?”
”What I am going to tell you is no secret, for I had it from the confidential agent of the Prince de Noirmont.”
”The father of Madame de Lucenay?” said Edward, with a cunning and significant look, of which Boyer, faithful to his habits of reserve and discretion, took no notice, but resumed, coldly:
”The d.u.c.h.ess de Lucenay is the daughter of the Prince de Noirmont; the father of my lord was intimately connected with the prince. The d.u.c.h.ess was then very young, and Saint Remy the elder treated her as familiarly as if she had been his own child. Notwithstanding his sixty years, he is a man of iron character, courageous as a lion, and of a probity that I shall permit myself to designate as marvelous. He possessed almost nothing, and had married, from love, the mother of the viscount, a young person rather rich, who brought a million, at the christening of which we have just had the honor to a.s.sist,” and Boyer made a low bow. Edward did the same.
”The marriage was very happy until the moment when my lord's father found, as was said, by chance, some devilish letters, which proved evidently that, during an absence, some three or four years after his marriage, his wife had had a tender weakness for a certain Polish count.”
”That often happens to the Poles. When I lived with the Marquis de Senneval, Madame the Marchioness--_une enragee_--”
Boyer interrupted his companion. ”You should know, my dear Edward, the alliances of our great families before you speak, otherwise you reserve for yourself cruel mistakes.”