"I have numbered them, I assure you, Madame," said I, "and they have
crept with a dull pace; but you know that business has claims as well as
pleasure!"

"True!" said Madame de Balzac, pompously: "I myself find the weight of
politics a little insupportable, though so used to it; to your young
brain I can readily imagine how irksome it must be!"

"Would, Madame, that I could obtain your experience by contagion; as it
is, I fear that I have profited little by my visit to his Majesty.
Madame de Maintenon will not see me, and the Bishop of Frejus (excellent
man!) has been seized with a sudden paralysis of memory whenever I
present myself in his way."

"That party will never do,--I thought not," said Madame de Balzae, who
was a wonderful imitator of the fly on the wheel; "/my/ celebrity, and
the knowledge that /I/ loved you for your father's sake, were, I fear,
sufficient to destroy your interest with the Jesuits and their tools.
Well, well, we must repair the mischief we have occasioned you. What
place would suit you best?"

"Why, anything diplomatic. I would rather travel, at my age, than
remain in luxury and indolence even at Paris!"

"Ah, nothing like diplomacy!" said Madame de Balzac, with the air of a
Richelieu, and emptying her snuff-box at a pinch; "but have you, my son,
the requisite qualities for that science, as well as the tastes? Are
you capable of intrigue? Can you say one thing and mean another? Are
you aware of the immense consequence of a look or a bow? Can you live