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I wish to be alone with M. de Manicamp; I know he has some important communication to make for his own justification, and which he will not venture before witnesses.... Put up your sword, M. de Manicamp." Manicamp returned his sword to his belt. "The fellow decidedly has his wits about him," murmured the musketeer, taking Saint-Aignan by the arm, and withdrawing with him.
Whenever he fires at an animal brought to bay and held in check by the dogs, he takes every possible precaution, and yet he fires with a carbine, and on this occasion he seems to have faced the boar with pistols only." Manicamp started. "A costly pair of pistols, excellent weapons to fight a duel with a man and not a wild boar. What an absurdity!"
"Whilst I am about it, I might as well get everybody appointed." And upon that he went away, leaving the poor lady quite disconcerted. "Humph!" murmured Malicorne as he descended the stairs, "Humph! there goes another note of a thousand livres! but I must get through as well as I can; my friend Manicamp does nothing for nothing."
Three or four times every year he drained the Comte de Guiche, and when the Comte de Guiche was thoroughly drained, when he had turned out his pockets and his purse before him, when he declared that it would be at least a fortnight before paternal munificence would refill those pockets and that purse, Manicamp lost all his energy, he went to bed, remained there, ate nothing and sold his handsome clothes, under the pretense that, remaining in bed, he did not want them.
Malicorne took up the pen, ink, and paper again, and presented them all to Manicamp. "Write!" said he. "Dictate!" "An order for a place in the household of Monsieur." "Oh!" said Manicamp, laying down the pen, "a place in the household of Monsieur for fifty pistoles?" "You mistook me, my friend; you did not hear plainly." "What did you say, then?" "I said five hundred." "And the five hundred?"
The courtiers drew nearer to the speakers, Saint-Aignan at their head, and then Manicamp. "But, my dear fellow, whose fault was that?" said De Guiche, laughing. "I am a vain, conceited fellow, I know, and everybody else knows it too. I took seriously that which was only intended as a jest, and got myself exiled for my pains. But I saw my error.
It was, indeed, Manicamp himself; but as Malicorne had taken possession of his very best costume, he had not been able to get any other than a suit of violet velvet trimmed with silver. Guiche recognized him as much by his dress as by his features, for he had very frequently seen Manicamp in his violet suit, which was his last resource.
"Very well; you will find him walking about on the side of the chateau where her apartments are." "Stay, my dear Malicorne, you were not mistaken, for here he is coming." "Why should I be mistaken? Have you ever noticed that I am in the habit of making a mistake? Come, we only need to understand each other. Are you in want of money?" "Ah!" exclaimed Manicamp, mournfully.
During this prostration of mind and strength, the purse of the Comte de Guiche was getting full again, and when once filled, overflowed into that of De Manicamp, who bought new clothes, dressed himself again, and recommenced the same life he had followed before.
In this way, Monsieur Manicamp, with a thoughtless and absent air for M. Manicamp was the honestest man in the world, appropriated twenty thousand francs, which were littering the table, and which did not seem to belong to any person in particular.
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