"Bah!" said Mademoiselle de Montalais, taking her place again; "Madame
will breakfast very well without me!"

"Oh! Montalais, you will be punished!" replied the other girl, sitting
down quietly in hers.

"Punished, indeed! - that is to say, deprived of a ride! That is just
the way in which I wish to be punished. To go out in the grand coach,
perched upon a doorstep; to turn to the left, twist round to the right,
over roads full of ruts, where we cannot exceed a league in two hours;
and then to come back straight towards the wing of the castle in which is
the window of Mary de Medici, so that Madame never fails to say: 'Could
one believe it possible that Mary de Medici should have escaped from that
window - forty-seven feet high? The mother of two princes and three
princesses!' If you call that relaxation, Louise, all I ask is to be
punished every day; particularly when my punishment is to remain with you
and write such interesting letters as we write!"

"Montalais! Montalais! there are duties to be performed."

"You talk of them very much at your ease, dear child! - you, who are
left quite free amidst this tedious court. You are the only person that
reaps the advantages of them without incurring the trouble, - you, who
are really more one of Madame's maids of honor than I am, because Madame
makes her affection for your father-in-law glance off upon you; so that
you enter this dull house as the birds fly into yonder court, inhaling
the air, pecking the flowers, picking up the grain, without having the
least service to perform, or the least annoyance to undergo. And you
talk to me of duties to be performed! In sooth, my pretty idler, what