He had lived by the Graces, and he was doomed to die by their hand.
While the chevalier was giving this last touch to his toilet the rough du Bousquier was entering the salon of the desolate old maid.This entrance produced a thought in Mademoiselle Cormon's mind which was favorable to the republican, although in all other respects the Chevalier de Valois held the advantages.
"God wills it!" she said piously, on seeing du Bousquier.
"Mademoiselle, you will not, I trust, think my eagerness importunate.
I could not trust to my stupid Rene to bring news of your condition, and therefore I have come myself.""I am perfectly recovered," she replied, in a tone of emotion."Ithank you, Monsieur du Bousquier," she added, after a slight pause, and in a significant tone of voice, "for the trouble you have taken, and for that which I gave you yesterday--"She remembered having been in his arms, and that again seemed to her an order from heaven.She had been seen for the first time by a man with her laces cut, her treasures violently bursting from their casket.
"I carried you with such joy that you seemed to me light."Here Mademoiselle Cormon looked at du Bousquier as she had never yet looked at any man in the world.Thus encouraged, the purveyor cast upon the old maid a glance which reached her heart.
"I would," he said, "that that moment had given me the right to keep you as mine forever" [she listened with a delighted air]; "as you lay fainting upon that bed, you were enchanting.I have never in my life seen a more beautiful person,--and I have seen many handsome women.