“I am not a lorette, I am an artist,” said Madame Schontz, with a sort of dignity, “I hope to end, as they say on the stage, as the progenitrix of honest men.”

“It is dreadful, but we are all marrying,” returned Maxime, throwing himself into an arm-chair beside the fire.  “Here am I, on the point of making a Comtesse Maxime.”

“Oh, how I should like to see her!” exclaimed Madame Schontz.  “But permit me to present to you Monsieur Claude Vignon—­Monsieur Claude Vignon, Monsieur de Trailles.”

“Ah, so you are the man who allowed Camille Maupin, the innkeeper of literature, to go into a convent?” cried Maxime.  “After you, God.  I never received such an honor.  Mademoiselle des Touches treated you, monsieur, as though you were Louis XIV.”

“That is how history is written!” replied Claude Vignon.  “Don’t you know that her fortune was used to free the Baron du Guenic’s estates?  Ah! if she only knew that Calyste now belongs to her ex-friend,” (Maxime pushed the critic’s foot, motioning to Rochefide), “she would issue from her convent, I do believe, to tear him from her.”

“Upon my word, Rochefide, if I were you,” said Maxime, finding that his warning did not stop Vignon, “I should give back my wife’s fortune, so that the world couldn’t say she attached herself to Calyste from necessity.”

“Maxime is right,” remarked Madame Schontz, looking at Arthur, who colored high.  “If I have helped you to gain several thousand francs a year, you couldn’t better employ them.  I shall have made the happiness of husband and wife; what a feather in my cap!”

“I never thought of it,” replied the marquis; “but a man should be a gentleman before he’s a husband.”

“Let me tell you when is the time to be generous,” said Maxime.

“Arthur,” said Aurelie, “Maxime is right.  Don’t you see, old fellow, that generous actions are like Couture’s investments?—­you should make them in the nick of time.”

At that moment Couture, followed by Finot, came in; and, soon after, all the guests were assembled in the beautiful blue and gold salon of the hotel Schontz, a title which the various artists had given to their inn after Rochefide purchased it for his Ninon II.  When Maxime saw La Palferine, the last to arrive, enter, he walked up to his lieutenant, and taking him aside into the recess of a window, gave him notes for twenty thousand francs.

“Remember, my boy, you needn’t economize them,” he said, with the particular grace of a true scamp.

“There’s none but you who can double the value of what you seem to give,” replied La Palferine.

“Have you decided?”

“Surely, inasmuch as I take the money,” said the count, with a mixture of haughtiness and jest.

“Well, then, Nathan, who is here to-night, will present you two days hence at the house of Madame la Marquise de Rochefide.”

La Palferine started when he heard the name.