and intriguing; to learn, by means of this woman, all the feminine secrets of the young household; while he, Malicorne, and his friend, Manicamp, should, between them, know all the male secrets of the young community. It was by these means that a rapid and splendid fortune might be acquired at one and the same time. Malicorne was a vile name; he who bore it had too much wit to conceal this truth from himself; but an estate might be purchased; and Malicorne of some place, or even De Malicorne itself, quite short, would sound nobly in the ear.
It was not improbable that a most aristocratic origin might be found for this name of Malicorne. Might it not come from some estate where a bull with mortal horns had caused some great misfortune and baptized the soil with the blood it had spilled? Certes, this plan presented itself bristling with difficulties; but the greatest of all was Mile, de Montalais herself. Capricious, variable, close, giddy, free, prudish, a virgin armed with claws, Erigone stained with grapes, she sometimes overturned, with a single dash of her white fingers, or with a single puff from her laughing lips, the edifice which had employed the patience of Malicorne a month to establish.
Love apart, Malicorne was happy; but this love, which he could not help feeling, he had the strength to conceal with care; persuaded that at the least relaxing of the ties by which he had bound his Protean female, the demon would overthrow him and laugh at him. He humbled his mistress by disdaining her. Burning with desire, when she advanced to tempt him, he had the art to appear ice, persuaded that if he opened his arms she would run away laughing at him. On her side, Montalais believed she did not love Malicorne; while, on the contrary, she did love him. Malicorne repeated to her so often his protestation of indifference that she finished sometimes by believing him; and then she believed she detested Malicorne. If she tried to bring him back by coquetry, Malicorne played the coquette better than she could. But what made Montalais hold to Malicorne in an indissoluble fashion was, that Malicorne was always come cram full of fresh news from the court and the city; it was that Malicorne always brought to Blois a fashion, a secret, or a perfume; it was that Malicorne never asked for a meeting, but, on the contrary, required to be supplicated to receive the favors he burned to obtain. On her side, Montalais was no miser with stories. By her means Malicorne learned all that passed at Blois in the
