“That,” said Hector, looking away, “is more difficult, not to say impossible.”

“Impossible, my dear Hector?” said Madame Marneffe in the Baron’s ear.  “But you do not know to what lengths Marneffe will go.  I am completely in his power; he is immoral for his own gratification, like most men, but he is excessively vindictive, like all weak and impotent natures.  In the position to which you have reduced me, I am in his power.  I am bound to be on terms with him for a few days, and he is quite capable of refusing to leave my room any more.”

Hulot started with horror.

“He would leave me alone on condition of being head-clerk.  It is abominable—­but logical.”

“Valerie, do you love me?”

“In the state in which I am, my dear, the question is the meanest insult.”

“Well, then—­if I were to attempt, merely to attempt, to ask the Prince for a place for Marneffe, I should be done for, and Marneffe would be turned out.”

“I thought that you and the Prince were such intimate friends.”

“We are, and he has amply proved it; but, my child, there is authority above the Marshal’s—­for instance, the whole Council of Ministers.  With time and a little tacking, we shall get there.  But, to succeed, I must wait till the moment when some service is required of me.  Then I can say one good turn deserves another—­”

“If I tell Marneffe this tale, my poor Hector, he will play us some mean trick.  You must tell him yourself that he has to wait.  I will not undertake to do so.  Oh!  I know what my fate would be.  He knows how to punish me!  He will henceforth share my room——­

“Do not forget to settle the twelve hundred francs a year on the little one!”

Hulot, seeing his pleasures in danger, took Monsieur Marneffe aside, and for the first time derogated from the haughty tone he had always assumed towards him, so greatly was he horrified by the thought of that half-dead creature in his pretty young wife’s bedroom.

“Marneffe, my dear fellow,” said he, “I have been talking of you to-day.  But you cannot be promoted to the first class just yet.  We must have time.”

“I will be, Monsieur le Baron,” said Marneffe shortly.

“But, my dear fellow—­”

“I will be, Monsieur le Baron,” Marneffe coldly repeated, looking alternately at the Baron and at Valerie.  “You have placed my wife in a position that necessitates her making up her differences with me, and I mean to keep her; for, my dear fellow, she is a charming creature,” he added, with crushing irony.  “I am master here—­more than you are at the War Office.”

The Baron felt one of those pangs of fury which have the effect, in the heart, of a fit of raging toothache, and he could hardly conceal the tears in his eyes.

During this little scene, Valerie had been explaining Marneffe’s imaginary determination to Montes, and thus had rid herself of him for a time.