“Do not enter upon those infamous actions until I have consulted the Abbe Brossette to know how far I may be your accomplice,” cried the duchess, with a naivete which disclosed what selfishness there is in piety.

“You shall be ignorant of everything, my dear mother,” interposed d’Ajuda.

On the portico, while the carriage of the marquis was drawing up, d’Ajuda said to Maxime:—­

“You frightened that good duchess.”

“But she has no idea of the difficulty of what she asks.  Let us go to the Jockey Club; Rochefide must invite me to dine with Madame Schontz to-morrow, for to-night my plan will be made, and I shall have chosen the pawns on my chess-board to carry it out.  In the days of her splendor Beatrix refused to receive me; I intend to pay off that score, and I will avenge your sister-in-law so cruelly that perhaps she will find herself too well revenged.”

The next day Rochefide told Madame Schontz that Maxime de Trailles was coming to dinner.  That meant notifying her to display all her luxury, and prepare the choicest food for this connoisseur emeritus, whom all the women of the Madame Schontz type were in awe of.  Madame Schontz herself thought as much of her toilet as of putting her house in a state to receive this personage.

In Paris there are as many royalties as there are varieties of art, mental and moral specialties, sciences, professions; the strongest and most capable of the men who practise them has a majesty which is all his own; he is appreciated, respected by his peers, who know the difficulties of his art or profession, and whose admiration is given to the man who surmounts them.  Maxime was, in the eyes of rats and courtesans, an extremely powerful and capable man, who had known how to make himself excessively loved.  He was also admired by men who knew how difficult it is to live in Paris on good terms with creditors; in short, he had never had any other rival in elegance, deportment, and wit than the illustrious de Marsay, who frequently employed him on political missions.  All this will suffice to explain his interview with the duchess, his prestige with Madame Schontz, and the authority of his words in a conference which he intended to have on the boulevard des Italiens with a young man already well-known, though lately arrived, in the Bohemia of Paris.

XXV

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

The next day, when Maxime de Trailles rose, Finot (whom he had summoned the night before) was announced.  Maxime requested his visitor to arrange, as if by accident, a breakfast at the cafe Anglais, where Finot, Couture, and Lousteau should gossip beside him.  Finot, whose position toward the Comte de Trailles was that of a sub-lieutenant before a marshall of France, could refuse him nothing; it was altogether too dangerous to annoy that lion.  Consequently, when Maxime came to the breakfast, he found Finot and his two friends at table and the conversation already started on Madame Schontz, about whom Couture, well manoeuvred by Finot and Lousteau (Lousteau being, though not aware of it, Finot’s tool), revealed to the Comte de Trailles all that he wanted to know about her.