"Then Adolphe must be two-and-twenty," the doctor went on, "for an Italian woman at thirty is equivalent to a Parisian of forty.""From these two facts, the romance may easily be reconstructed," said Lousteau. "And this Cavaliere Paluzzi--what a man!--The style is weak in these two passages; the author was perhaps a clerk in the Excise Office, and wrote the novel to pay his tailor!""In his time," said Bianchon, "the censor flourished; you must show as much indulgence to a man who underwent the ordeal by scissors in 1805as to those who went to the scaffold in 1793.""Do you understand in the least?" asked Madame Gorju timidly of Madame de Clagny.
The Public Prosecutor's wife, who, to use a phrase of Monsieur Gravier's, might have put a Cossack to flight in 1814, straightened herself in her chair like a horseman in his stirrups, and made a face at her neighbor, conveying, "They are looking at us; we must smile as if we understood.""Charming!" said the Mayoress to Gatien. "Pray go on, Monsieur Lousteau."Lousteau looked at the two women, two Indian idols, and contrived to keep his countenance. He thought it desirable to say, "Attention!"before going on as follows:--
OR ROMAN REVENGE 209
dress rustled in the silence. Sud-
denly Cardinal Borborigano stood before the Duchess.
"His face was gloomy, his brow was dark with clouds, and a bitter smile lurked in his wrinkles.
"Madame," said he, "you are under suspicion. If you are guilty, fly. If you are not, still fly; because, whether criminal or innocent, you will find it easier to defend yourself from a distance.""I thank your Eminence for your solicitude," said she. "The Duke of Bracciano will reappear when I find it needful to prove that he is alive.""Cardinal Borborigano!" exclaimed Bianchon. "By the Pope's keys! If you do not agree with me that there is a magnificent creation in the very name, if at those words /dress rustled in the silence/ you do not feel all the poetry thrown into the part of Schedoni by Mrs. Radcliffe in /The Black Penitent/, you do not deserve to read a romance.""For my part," said Dinah, who had some pity on the eighteen faces gazing up at Lousteau, "I see how the story is progressing. I know it all. I am in Rome; I can see the body of a murdered husband whose wife, as bold as she is wicked, has made her bed on the crater of a volcano. Every night, at every kiss, she says to herself, 'All will be discovered!' ""Can you see her," said Lousteau, "clasping Monsieur Adolphe in her arms, to her heart, throwing her whole life into a kiss?--Adolphe Isee as a well-made young man, but not clever--the sort of man an Italian woman likes. Rinaldo hovers behind the scenes of a plot we do not know, but which must be as full of incident as a melodrama by Pixerecourt. Or we can imagine Rinaldo crossing the stage in the background like a figure in one of Victor Hugo's plays.""He, perhaps, is the husband," exclaimed Madame de la Baudraye.
"Do you understand anything of it all?" Madame Piedefer asked of the Presidente.
"Why, it is charming!" said Dinah to her mother.
All the good folks of Sancerre sat with eyes as large as five-franc pieces.
"Go on, I beg," said the hostess.
Lousteau went on:--
210 OLYMPIA
"Your key----"
"Have you lost it?"
"It is in the arbor."
"Let us hasten."
"Can the Cardinal have taken it?"
"No, here it is."
"What danger we have escaped!"
Olympia looked at the key, and fancied she recognized it as her own.
But Rinaldo had changed it; his cunning had triumphed; he had the right key. Like a modern Cartouche, he was no less skilful than bold, and suspecting that nothing but a vast treasure could require a duchess to carry it constantly at her belt.
"Guess!" cried Lousteau. "The corresponding page is not here. We must look to page 212 to relieve our anxiety."212OLYMPIA
"If the key had been lost?"
"He would now be a dead man."
"Dead? But ought you not to grant the last request he made, and to give him his liberty on the con-ditions----"
"You do not know him."
"But--"
"Silence! I took you for my lover, not for my confessor."Adolphe was silent.
"And then comes an exquisite galloping goat, a tail-piece drawn by Normand, and cut by Duplat.--the names are signed," said Lousteau.
"Well, and then?" said such of the audience as understood.
"That is the end of the chapter," said Lousteau. "The fact of this tailpiece changes my views as to the authorship. To have his book got up, under the Empire, with vignettes engraved on wood, the writer must have been a Councillor of State, or Madame Barthelemy-Hadot, or the late lamented Desforges, or Sewrin."" 'Adolphe was silent.'--Ah!" cried Bianchon, "the Duchess must have been under thirty.""If there is no more, invent a conclusion," said Madame de la Baudraye.
"You see," said Lousteau, "the waste sheet has been printed fair on one side only. In printer's lingo, it is a back sheet, or, to make it clearer, the other side which would have to be printed is covered all over with pages printed one above another, all experiments in ****** up. It would take too long to explain to you all the complications of a ******-up sheet; but you may understand that it will show no more trace of the first twelve pages that were printed on it than you would in the least remember the first stroke of the bastinado if a Pasha condemned you to have fifty on the soles of your feet.""I am quite bewildered," said Madame Popinot-Chandier to Monsieur Gravier. "I am vainly trying to connect the Councillor of State, the Cardinal, the key, and the ******-up----""You have not the key to the jest," said Monsieur Gravier. "Well! no more have I, fair lady, if that can comfort you.""But here is another sheet," said Bianchon, hunting on the table where the proofs had been laid.