"Well, the tiger of the handsome count, drunk as he is, is now riding
to Troyes to post a letter, and he'll get there, as they say, in
five-quarters of an hour."

"I'd like to have that tiger," said Vinet.

"If the count dined at Gondreville we shall soon know all about him,"
remarked Cecile; "for my grandpapa is going there to-morrow morning."

"What will strike you as very strange," said Antonin Goulard, "is that
the party at Cinq-Cygne have just sent Mademoiselle Anicette, the maid
of the Princesse de Cadignan, in the Cinq-Cygne carriage, with a note
to the stranger, and he is going now to pass the night there."

"_Ah ca_!" said Olivier Vinet, "then he is not a man; he's a devil, a
phoenix, he will poculate--"

"Ah, fie! monsieur," said Madame Mollot, "you use words that are
really--"

"'Poculate' is a word of the highest latinity, madame," replied Vinet,
gravely. "So, as I said, he will poculate with Louis Philippe in the
morning, and banquet at the Holy-Rood with Charles the Tenth at night.
There is but one reason that allows a decent man to go to both camps
--from Montague to Capulet! Ha, ha! I know who that stranger is.
He's--"

"The president of a railway from Paris to Lyons, or Paris to Dijon, or
from Montereau to Troyes."