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He laid aside for the moment his political anxieties, and Madame de Cinq-Cygne endured him, as they say the Court of Austria endured de Saint-Aulaire; the man of the world effaced the minister of the citizen-king. But she rose to her feet as though her chair were of red-hot iron when the name was announced of "Monsieur le Comte de Gondreville."

When she passed the pate through the door he dropped it to seize her hand and then, with great swiftness, he tried to pull the rings from her fingers, one her wedding-ring, the other a gift from Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne. "You cannot deny that it is you, my dear Madame Michu," he said. Marthe closed her fist the moment she felt his fingers, and gave him a vigorous blow in the chest.

"I found the corporal," he said to Corentin, "lying in the road which leads from the pavilion of Cinq-Cygne to the farm at Bellache. He has no wound, only a bad contusion of the head, caused, apparently, by his fall. He told me he had been lifted suddenly off his horse and flung so violently to the ground that he could not discover how the thing was done.

Ten minutes later the chateau de Cinq-Cygne was completely evacuated. "How did they get rid of the corporal?" said Laurence to Francois Michu, whom she had ordered to sit down and eat some breakfast. "My father told me it was a matter of life and death and I mustn't let anybody get into our house," replied the boy.

Madame and Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne were announced. Laurence, whose principles were unyielding, was not only surprised but shocked to see the most illustrious representatives of Legitimacy talking and laughing in a friendly manner with the prime minister of the man whom she never called anything but Monsieur le Duc d'Orleans. De Marsay, like an expiring lamp, shone with a last brilliancy.

Constant, the valet, was offering the Emperor his coffee from a tray. "What do you want?" said Napoleon, with a show of roughness, darting his eye like a flash through Laurence's head. "You are no longer afraid to speak to me before the battle? What is it about?" "Sire," she said, looking at him with as firm an eye, "I am Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne."

The farmer of Cinq-Cygne was already his enemy. Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, the man's employer, was a cousin of the Simeuse brothers; she had only one farm left for her maintenance and was now residing at her chateau of Cinq-Cygne. She lived for her cousins the twins, with whom she had played in childhood at Troyes and at Gondreville.

"If that puzzles you, old fellow," said Peyrade, laughing, "look at your horses' shoes, and you'll see that you betrayed yourselves." "Well, there need be no rancor!" said Corentin, whistling for the captain of gendarmerie and their horses. "So that rascally Parisian blacksmith who shoed the horses in the English fashion and left Cinq-Cygne only the other day was their spy!" thought Michu.

After his installation as Laurence's guardian at Cinq-Cygne old d'Hauteserre converted a long ravine, through which the water of the forest flowed into the moat, into a roadway between two tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the chateau, by merely planting out in it about a hundred walnut trees which he found ready in the nursery.

Madame de Cinq-Cygne was gracious and affectionate in manner to the four friends of her friend, and showed the utmost respect to Monsieur Nicolas.