“You are not blind,” she said, laughing.  “The man is as ugly as a caterpillar; but he has done me the most immense service a woman can receive from a man.”

As I looked at her rather maliciously she hastened to add:  “He’s a physician, and he has completely cured me of those odious red blotches which spoiled my complexion and made me look like a peasant woman.”

I shrugged my shoulders with disgust.

“He is a charlatan.”

“No,” she said, “he is the surgeon of the court pages.  He has a fine intellect, I assure you; in fact, he is a writer, and a very learned man.”

“Heavens! if his style resembles his face!” I said scoffingly.  “But who is the other?”

“What other?”

“That spruce, affected little popinjay over there, who looks as if he had been drinking verjuice.”

“He is a rather well-born man,” she replied; “just arrived from some province, I forget which—­oh! from Artois.  He is sent here to conclude an affair in which the Cardinal de Rohan is interested, and his Eminence in person had just presented him to Monsieur de Saint-James.  It seems they have both chosen my husband as arbitrator.  The provincial didn’t show his wisdom in that; but fancy what simpletons the people who sent him here must be to trust a case to a man of his sort!  He is as meek as a sheep and as timid as a girl.  His Eminence is very kind to him.”

“What is the nature of the affair?”

“Oh! a question of three hundred thousand francs.”

“Then the man is a lawyer?” I said, with a slight shrug.

“Yes,” she replied.

Somewhat confused by this humiliating avowal, Madame Bodard returned to her place at a faro-table.

All the tables were full.  I had nothing to do, no one to speak to, and I had just lost two thousand crowns to Monsieur de Laval.  I flung myself on a sofa near the fireplace.  Presently, if there was ever a man on earth most utterly astonished it was I, when, on looking up, I saw, seated on another sofa on the opposite side of the fireplace, Monsieur de Calonne, the comptroller-general.  He seemed to be dozing, or else he was buried in one of those deep meditations which overtake statesmen.  When I pointed out the famous minister to Beaumarchais, who happened to come near me at that moment, the father of Figaro explained the mystery of his presence in that house without uttering a word.  He pointed first at my head, then at Bodard’s with a malicious gesture which consisted in turning to each of us two fingers of his hand while he kept the others doubled up.  My first impulse was to rise and say something rousing to Calonne; then I paused, first, because I thought of a trick I could play the statesman, and secondly, because Beaumarchais caught me familiarly by the hand.

“Why do you do that, monsieur?” I said.

He winked at the comptroller.

“Don’t wake him,” he said in a low voice.  “A man is happy when asleep.”