at once." So Malletort, leaving the ill-used warrior to his own companionship, passed on to an inner apartment, taking with him a stool in his hand, as was the custom, in case the interview should be protracted, and the Regent require him to sit down.
The room he entered was small, gloomy, panelled with a dark-coloured wood, octagonal in shape, relieved by very little furniture, and having another door, opposite that which admitted the visitor, concealed by heavy velvet curtains. At the solitary table, and on the single chair the apartment contained, a man was seated, writing busily, with his back to the Abbé. A general air of litter pervaded the place, and although the table was heaped with papers, several more were scattered in disorder over the floor.
The writer continued his occupation for several minutes, as if unconscious of the Abbe's presence. Suddenly he gave a sigh of relief, pushed his chair back from the table, and looked up joyously, like a schoolboy interrupted in his task.
"You are welcome, monsieur, you are welcome," said he, rising and pacing to and fro with short, quick steps, while Malletort performed a series of courtly and elaborate bows. "I am about wearied of figures, and I have been saying to myself, with every passing step for the last half-hour, 'Ah! here comes my little Abbé, who confines himself exclusively to facts—my material and deep-thinking churchman, the best judge in Christendom of wine, pictures, carriages, cutlets, ankles, eyelashes, probabilities, dress, devilry, and deeds of darkness. Here are calculations of Las, to show us all how we need only be able to write our names, and so acquire boundless wealth; but the miserable Scotchman knows no more than the dead how to spend his millions. Would you believe it, my dear fellow, Vaudeville dined with him last night, and they served olives with the stewed ortolans? Olives, I tell you, with ortolans! The man must be a hog!" And the Regent wrinkled up his forehead while he spoke in a favourite grimace, that he flattered himself resembled the portraits of Henri Quatre.
He bore, indeed, a kind of spurious resemblance to that great king and gallant soldier, but the resemblance of the brach to the deer-hound, the palfrey to the war-horse, the
