lets), "it is the hour I told the count, 21st May, at half-past ten; and
though I do not much rely upon his promise, I wish to be punctual. Is Madame la Comtesse up yet?"
"If M. le Vicomte wishes, I will inquire."
"Yes; ask her for one of her liqueur cellarets; mine is incomplete; and tell her I shall have the honor of seeing her about three o'clock, and that I request permission to introduce some one to her."
The valet left the room. Albert threw himself on the divan, tore off the cover of two or three of the papers, looked at the playbills, made a face at perceiving they played an opera, and not a ballet; hunted vainly amongst the advertisements for a new tooth-powder of which he had heard, and threw down, one after the other, the three leading papers of Paris, muttering:
"These papers become more and more stupid every day."
A moment after, a carnage stopped before the door, and the servant announced M. Lucien Debray.
A tall young man, with light hair, clear gray eyes, and thin and compressed lips, dressed in a blue coat with gold buttons, a white neck cloth, and a tortoise-shell eye-glass, suspended by a silken thread, and which, by an effort of the superciliary and zygomatic nerves, he fixed in his eye, entered, with a half-official air, without smiling or speaking.
"Good-morning, Lucien! good-morning!" said Albert; "your punctuality really alarms me. What do I say? punctuality! You, whom I expected last, you arrive at five minutes to ten, when the time fixed was half-past! Have ministers resigned?"
"No, my dear fellow," returned the young man, seating himself on the divan; "re-assure yourself. We are tottering always, but we never fall; and I begin to believe we shall pass into a state of immobility, and then the affairs of the Peninsula will completely consolidate us."
"Ah, true! you drive Don Carlos out of Spain."
"No, no, my dear fellow, do not confound things. We take him to the other side of the French frontier, and offer him hospitality at Bourges."
"At Bourges?"
"Yes, he has not much to complain of; Bourges is the capital of Charles VII. Do you not know this? why, all Paris knew it yesterday, and the day before it had already transpired on the Bourse, and M. Danglars (I do not know by what means that man contrives to obtain intelligence as soon as we do) made a million ($200,000)!"
"And you another order, for I see you have a blue ribbon at your button-hole."
"Yes, they sent me the order of Charles III.," returned Debray carelessly.
