“Do not forget me!” cried the
  robber, who knew what gratitude
  was.

“No more than my father,” cried
the Duke.

“Good-bye!” said Rinaldo.  “Lord!  How he flies up!” he added to him- self as the Duke disappeared.—­“No more than his father!  If that is all he means to do for me.—­And I

         OR ROMAN REVENGE 229

had sworn a vow never to injure a
woman!”

But let us leave the robber for a moment to his meditations and go up, like the Duke, to the rooms in the palace.

“Another tailpiece, a Cupid on a snail!  And page 230 is blank,” said the journalist.  “Then there are two more blank pages before we come to the word it is such a joy to write when one is unhappily so happy as to be a novelist—­Conclusion!

CONCLUSION

Never had the Duchess been more
lovely; she came from her bath
clothed like a goddess, and on seeing

234 OLYMPIA

Adolphe voluptuously reclining on
piles of cushions—­

  “You are beautiful,” said she.

  “And so are you, Olympia!”

  “And you still love me?”

  “More and more,” said he.

“Ah, none but a Frenchman knows how to love!” cried the Duchess.  “Do you love me well to- night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then come!”

And with an impulse of love and hate—­whether it was that Cardinal Borborigano had reminded her of her husband, or that she felt un- wonted passion to display, she pressed the springs and held out her arms.

“That is all,” said Lousteau, “for the foreman has torn off the rest in wrapping up my proofs.  But it is enough to show that the author was full of promise.”

“I cannot make head or tail of it,” said Gatien Boirouge, who was the first to break the silence of the party from Sancerre.

“Nor I,” replied Monsieur Gravier.

“And yet it is a novel of the time of the Empire,” said Lousteau.

“By the way in which the brigand is made to speak,” said Monsieur Gravier, “it is evident that the author knew nothing of Italy.  Banditti do not allow themselves such graceful conceits.”

Madame Gorju came up to Bianchon, seeing him pensive, and with a glance towards her daughter Mademoiselle Euphemie Gorju, the owner of a fairly good fortune—­“What a rhodomontade!” said she.  “The prescriptions you write are worth more than all that rubbish.”

The Mayoress had elaborately worked up this speech, which, in her opinion, showed strong judgment.

“Well, madame, we must be lenient, we have but twenty pages out of a thousand,” said Bianchon, looking at Mademoiselle Gorju, whose figure threatened terrible things after the birth of her first child.

“Well, Monsieur de Clagny,” said Lousteau, “we were talking yesterday of the forms of revenge invented by husbands.  What do you say to those invented by wives?”