Chapter 50

Chapter L:
How Malicorne Had Been Turned Out of the Hotel of the Beau Paon.

While Montalais was engaged in looking after the comte and Manicamp,
Malicorne had taken advantage of the young girl's attention being drawn
away to render his position somewhat more tolerable, and when she turned
round, she immediately noticed the change which had taken place; for he
had seated himself, like a monkey, upon the wall, the foliage of the wild
vine and honeysuckle curled around his head like a faun, while the
twisted ivy branches represented tolerably enough his cloven feet.
Montalais required nothing to make her resemblance to a dryad as complete
as possible. "Well," she said, ascending another round of the ladder,
"are you resolved to render me unhappy? have you not persecuted me
enough, tyrant that you are?"

"I a tyrant?" said Malicorne.

"Yes, you are always compromising me, Monsieur Malicorne; you are a
perfect monster of wickedness."

"I?"

"What have you to do with Fontainebleau? Is not Orleans your place of
residence?"

"Do you ask me what I have to do here? I wanted to see you."

"Ah, great need of that."

"Not as far as concerns yourself, perhaps, but as far as I am concerned,
Mademoiselle Montalais, you know very well that I have left my home, and
that, for the future, I have no other place of residence than that which
you may happen to have. As you, therefore, are staying at Fontainebleau
at the present moment, I have come to Fontainebleau."

Montalais shrugged her shoulders. "You wished to see me, did you not?"
she said.

"Of course."

"Very well, you have seen me, - you are satisfied; so now go away."

"Oh, no," said Malicorne; "I came to talk with you as well as to see you."

"Very well, we will talk by and by, and in another place than this."

"By and by! Heaven only knows if I shall meet you by and by in another
place. We shall never find a more favorable one than this."

"But I cannot this evening, nor at the present moment."

"Why not?"

"Because a thousand things have happened to-night."

"Well, then, my affair will make a thousand and one."

"No, no; Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente is waiting for me in our room to
communicate something of the very greatest importance."

"How long has she been waiting?"

"For an hour at least."

"In that case," said Malicorne, tranquilly, "she can wait a few minutes
longer."

"Monsieur Malicorne," said Montalais, "you are forgetting yourself."

"You should rather say that it is you who are forgetting me, and that I
am getting impatient at the part you make me play here indeed! For the
last week I have been prowling about among the