“She gets up at ten every morning; then she breakfasts.  Well and good.  After that she takes an hour or so to dress; that carries her on till two; then she goes for a walk in the Tuileries in the sight of all men, and she is always in by four to be ready for you.  She lives like clockwork.  She keeps no secrets from her maid, and Reine keeps nothing from me, you may be sure.  Reine can’t if she would—­along of my son, for she is very sweet upon him.  So, you see, if madame had any intimacy with Monsieur Crevel, we should be bound to know it.”

The Baron went upstairs again with a beaming countenance, convinced that he was the only man in the world to that shameless slut, as treacherous, but as lovely and as engaging as a siren.

Crevel and Marneffe had begun a second rubber at piquet.  Crevel was losing, as a man must who is not giving his thoughts to his game.  Marneffe, who knew the cause of the Mayor’s absence of mind, took unscrupulous advantage of it; he looked at the cards in reverse, and discarded accordingly; thus, knowing his adversary’s hand, he played to beat him.  The stake being a franc a point, he had already robbed the Mayor of thirty francs when Hulot came in.

“Hey day!” said he, amazed to find no company.  “Are you alone?  Where is everybody gone?”

“Your pleasant temper put them all to flight,” said Crevel.

“No, it was my wife’s cousin,” replied Marneffe.  “The ladies and gentlemen supposed that Valerie and Henri might have something to say to each other after three years’ separation, and they very discreetly retired.—­If I had been in the room, I would have kept them; but then, as it happens, it would have been a mistake, for Lisbeth, who always comes down to make tea at half-past ten, was taken ill, and that upset everything—­”

“Then is Lisbeth really unwell?” asked Crevel in a fury.

“So I was told,” replied Marneffe, with the heartless indifference of a man to whom women have ceased to exist.

The Mayor looked at the clock; and, calculating the time, the Baron seemed to have spent forty minutes in Lisbeth’s rooms.  Hector’s jubilant expression seriously incriminated Valerie, Lisbeth, and himself.

“I have just seen her; she is in great pain, poor soul!” said the Baron.

“Then the sufferings of others must afford you much joy, my friend,” retorted Crevel with acrimony, “for you have come down with a face that is positively beaming.  Is Lisbeth likely to die?  For your daughter, they say, is her heiress.  You are not like the same man.  You left this room looking like the Moor of Venice, and you come back with the air of Saint-Preux!—­I wish I could see Madame Marneffe’s face at this minute——­”

“And pray, what do you mean by that?” said Marneffe to Crevel, packing his cards and laying them down in front of him.

A light kindled in the eyes of this man, decrepit at the age of forty-seven; a faint color flushed his flaccid cold cheeks, his ill-furnished mouth was half open, and on his blackened lips a sort of foam gathered, thick, and as white as chalk.  This fury in such a helpless wretch, whose life hung on a thread, and who in a duel would risk nothing while Crevel had everything to lose, frightened the Mayor.