family of the dowager madame; and he related to Manicamp tales that made him ready to die with laughing, which the latter, out of idleness, took ready-made to M. de Guiche, who carried them to Monsieur.
Such, in two words, was the woof of petty interests and petty conspiracies which united Blois with Orleans, and Orleans with Paris; and which was about to bring into the last-named city, where she was to produce so great a revolution, the poor little La Valliere, who was far from suspecting, as she returned joyfully, leaning on the arm of her mother, for what a strange future she was re- served. As to the good man, Malicorne — we speak of the syndic of Orleans — he did not see more clearly into the present than others did into the future; and had no suspicion as he walked, every day, between three and five o'clock, after his dinner, upon the Place St. Catherine, in his gray coat, cut after the fashion of Louis XIII., and his cloth shoes with great knots of ribbon, that it was he who paid for all those bursts of laughter, all those stolen kisses, all those whisperings, all that ribbonry, and all those bubble projects which formed a chain of forty-five leagues in length, from the Palais of Blois to the Palais Royal.
CHAPTER V.
MANICAMP AND MALICORNE.
Malicorne, then, left Blois, as we have said, and went to find his friend Manicamp, then in temporary retreat in the city of Orleans. It was just at the moment when that young nobleman was employed in selling the last piece of decent clothing he had left. He had, a fortnight before, extorted from the Comte de Guiche a hundred pistoles, all he had, to assist in equipping him properly to go and meet madame on her arrival at Havre. He had drawn from Malicorne, three days before, fifty pistoles, the price of the brevet obtained for Montalais. He had then no expectation from anything else, having exhausted all his resources, with the exception of selling a handsome suit of cloth and satin, all embroidered and laced with gold, which had been the admiration of the court. But to be able to sell this suit, the last he had left — as we have been forced to confess to the reader — Manicamp had been obliged to take to his
bed. No more fire, no more pocket-money, no more walk-
