“I have nothing to reproach you with, monsieur,” replied the countess:  “but I do not wish to incur reproach on my own part by permitting such a marriage:  I thought you too sensible and reasonable a man to need reminding that, while you confined yourself to suitable requests and moderate ambitions, you had reason to be pleased with our gratitude.  Do you ask that your salary shall be doubled?  The thing is easy.  Do you desire important posts?  They shall be given you; but do not, sir, so far forget yourself as to aspire to an alliance that you cannot flatter yourself with a hope of ever attaining.”

“But, madame,” returned the petitioner, “who told you that my birth was so obscure as to debar me from all hope of obtaining your consent?”

“Why, you yourself, monsieur, I think,” answered the countess in astonishment; “or if you did not say so, your name said so for you.”

“And if that name is not mine, madame?” said the abbe, growing bolder; “if unfortunate, terrible, fatal circumstances have compelled me to take that name in order to hide another that was too unhappily famous, would your Highness then be so unjust as not to change your mind?”

“Monsieur,” replied the countess, “you have said too much now not to go on to the end.  Who are you?  Tell me.  And if, as you give me to understand, you are of good birth, I swear to you that want of fortune shall not stand in the way.”

“Alas, madame,” cried the abbe, throwing himself at her feet, “my name, I am sure, is but too familiar to your Highness, and I would willingly at this moment give half my blood that you had never heard it uttered; but you have said it, madame, have gone too far to recede.  Well, then, I am that unhappy abbe de Ganges whose crimes are known and of whom I have more than once heard you speak.”

“The abbe de Ganges!” cried the countess in horror,—­“the abbe de Ganges!  You are that execrable abbe de Ganges whose very name makes one shudder?  And to you, to a man thus infamous, we have entrusted the education of our only son?  Oh, I hope, for all our sakes, monsieur, that you are speaking falsely; for if you were speaking the truth I think I should have you arrested this very instant and taken back to France to undergo your punishment.  The best thing you can do, if what you have said to me is true, is instantly to leave not only the castle, but the town and the principality; it will be torment enough for the rest of my life whenever I think that I have spent seven years under the same roof with you.”

The abbe would have replied; but the countess raised her voice so much, that the young prince, who had been won over to his tutor’s interests and who was listening at his mother’s door, judged that his protege’s business was taking an unfavourable turn; and went in to try and put things right.  He found his mother so much alarmed that she drew him to her by an instinctive movement, as though to put herself under his protection, and beg and pray as he might; he could only obtain permission for his tutor to go away undisturbed to any country of the world that he might prefer, but with an express prohibition of ever again entering the presence of the Count or the Countess of Lippe.