better worth your while than that titled courtesan, who does with
her brains what less artificial women do with----"

"What is this, my dear fellow?" Armand broke in. "The Duchess
is an angel of innocence."

Ronquerolles began to laugh.

"Things being thus, dear boy," said he, "it is my duty to
enlighten you. Just a word; there is no harm in it between
ourselves. Has the Duchess surrendered? If so, I have nothing
more to say. Come, give me your confidence. There is no
occasion to waste your time in grafting your great nature on that
unthankful stock, when all your hopes and cultivation will come
to nothing."

Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position,
enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly
won. Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter so heartless,
that it would have cost any other man his life. But from their
manner of speaking and looking at each other during that colloquy
beneath the wall, in a corner almost as remote from intrusion as
the desert itself, it was easy to imagine the friendship between
the two men knew no bounds, and that no power on earth could
estrange them.

"My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a
puzzle to you? I would have given you a little advice which
might have brought your flirtation properly through. You must
know, to begin with, that the women of our Faubourg, like any