La Constantin | Page 8

the date he had fixed for his return
that she began to feel uneasy. What could be keeping him? Some new
flame, perhaps. The anxiety of the lady was all the more keen, that until
now nothing had passed between them but looks of languor and words
of love. The duke had laid himself and all he possessed at the feet of
Angelique, and Angelique had refused his offer. A too prompt
surrender would have justified the reports so wickedly spread against
her; and, made wise by experience, she was resolved not to
compromise her future as she had compromised her past. But while
playing at virtue she had also to play at disinterestedness, and her
pecuniary resources were consequently almost exhausted. She had
proportioned the length of her resistance to the length of her purse, and
now the prolonged absence of her lover threatened to disturb the
equilibrium which she had established between her virtue and her
money. So it happened that the cause of the lovelorn Duc de Vitry was
in great peril just at the moment when de Jars and Jeannin resolved to
approach the fair one anew. She was sitting lost in thought, pondering
in all good faith on the small profit it was to a woman to be virtuous,
when she heard voices in the antechamber. Then her door opened, and
the king's treasurer walked in.
As this interview and those which follow took place in the presence of
witnesses, we are obliged to ask the reader to accompany us for a time

to another part of the same house.
We have said there were several tenants: now the person who occupied
the rooms next to those in which Mademoiselle de Guerchi lived was a
shopkeeper's widow called Rapally, who was owner of one of the
thirty-two houses which then occupied the bridge Saint-Michel. They
had all been constructed at the owner's cost, in return for a lease for
ever. The widow Rapally's avowed age was forty, but those who knew
her longest added another ten years to that: so, to avoid error, let us say
she was forty-five. She was a solid little body, rather stouter than was
necessary for beauty; her hair was black, her complexion brown, her
eyes prominent and always moving; lively, active, and if one once
yielded to her whims, exacting beyond measure; but until then buxom
and soft, and inclined to pet and spoil whoever, for the moment, had
arrested her volatile fancy. Just as we make her acquaintance this happy
individual was a certain Maitre Quennebert, a notary of Saint Denis,
and the comedy played between him and the widow was an exact
counterpart of the one going on in the rooms of Mademoiselle de
Guerchi, except that the roles were inverted; for while the lady was as
much in love as the Duc de Vitry, the answering devotion professed by
the notary was as insincere as the disinterested attachment to her lover
displayed by the whilom maid of honour.
Maitre Quennebert was still young and of attractive appearance, but his
business affairs were in a bad way. For long he had been pretending not
to understand the marked advances of the widow, and he treated her
with a reserve and respect she would fain have dispensed with, and
which sometimes made her doubt of his love. But it was impossible for
her as a woman to complain, so she was forced to accept with
resignation the persistent and unwelcome consideration with which he
surrounded her. Maitre Quennebert was a man of common sense and
much experience, and had formed a scheme which he was prevented
from carrying out by an obstacle which he had no power to remove. He
wanted, therefore, to gain time, for he knew that the day he gave the
susceptible widow a legal right over him he would lose his
independence. A lover to whose prayers the adored one remains deaf
too long is apt to draw back in discouragement, but a woman whose

part is restricted to awaiting those prayers, and answering with a yes or
no, necessarily learns patience. Maitre Quennebert would therefore
have felt no anxiety as to the effect of his dilatoriness on the widow,
were it not for the existence of a distant cousin of the late Monsieur
Rapally, who was also paying court to her, and that with a warmth
much greater than had hitherto been displayed by himself. This fact, in
view of the state of the notary's affairs, forced him at last to display
more energy. To make up lost ground and to outdistance his rival once
more, he now began to dazzle the widow with fine phrases and delight
her with compliments; but to tell the truth all this trouble was
superfluous; he was beloved, and