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Updated: May 10, 2025
The duke glanced at Philoxene, who showed him by an almost imperceptible sign the letter from Havre on the dressing-table. "You would be terribly bored at Baden and come back at daggers drawn with Melchior," said the duke. "Pray why?" "Why, you would always be together," said the former diplomat, with comic good-humor. "Oh, no," she said; "I am going to marry him."
Finding herself betrayed and abandoned for the millions, Eleonore gave way to a paroxysm of anger, hatred, and cold vindictiveness. Philoxene knocked at the door of the sumptuous room, and entering found her mistress with her eyes full of tears, so unprecedented a phenomenon in the fifteen years she had waited upon her that the woman stopped short stupefied.
I know all about her character, her tastes, her toilette, her religion, and her manners; for Philoxene stripped her for me, soul and corset. I went to the opera expressly to see her, and I didn't grudge the ten francs it cost me I don't mean the play.
So my cousin Philoxene, enticed by the bait of a highly improbable fortune, has told me a good many things." "The duchess is vindictive?" said La Briere. "Vindictive as a queen, Philoxene says; she has never yet forgiven the duke for being nothing more than her husband," replied Butscha. "She hates as she loves.
"Who do you know about all this?" said La Briere, interrupting Butscha. "In the first place, I am clerk to a notary," answered Butscha. "But haven't you seen my hump? It is full of resources, monsieur. I have made myself cousin to Mademoiselle Philoxene Jacmin, born at Honfleur, where my mother was born, a Jacmin, there are eight branches of the Jacmins at Honfleur.
None but the women whose quarterings begin with Noah know, as Eleonore did, how to be majestic in spite of a buxom tendency. A philosopher might have pitied Philoxene, while admiring the graceful lines of the bust and the minute care bestowed upon a morning dress, which was worn with the elegance of a queen and the easy grace of a young girl.
"We expiate the happiness of ten years in ten minutes," she heard the duchess say. "A letter from Havre, madame." Eleonore read the poet's prose without noticing the presence of Philoxene, whose amazement became still greater when she saw the dawn of fresh serenity on the duchess's face as she read further and further into the letter.
The evening before the day on which Canalis put the above epistle into the post, Butscha, under the name of Jean Jacmin, had received a letter from his fictitious cousin, Philoxene, and had mailed his answer, which thus preceded the letter of the poet by about twelve hours.
"Poor fellow!" she thought; "he has not had one faithless thought; he loves me as he did on the first day; he tells me all Philoxene!" she cried, noticing her maid, who was standing near and pretending to arrange the toilet-table. "Madame la duchesse?" "A mirror, child!"
Perhaps he'll unbutton after a bottle or two of champagne, or at any rate a third. It would be strange indeed if monsieur, who will one day be ambassador, as Philoxene has heard Madame la duchesse say time and time again, couldn't turn a little notary's clerk inside out."
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