“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!
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?”
