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for a woman devoted to himself, who was intelligent, young,
handsome, and intriguing; to learn, by means of this woman,
all the feminine secrets of the young household, whilst he,
Malicorne, and his friend Manicamp, should, between them,
know all the male secrets of the young community. It was by
these means that a rapid and splendid fortune might be
acquired at one and the same time. Malicorne was a vile
name; he who bore it had too much wit to conceal this truth
from himself; but an estate might be purchased; and
Malicorne of some place, or even De Malicorne itself, for
short, would ring more nobly on the ear.
It was not improbable that a most aristocratic origin might
be hunted up by the heralds for this name of Malicorne;
might it not come from some estate where a bull with mortal
horns had caused some great misfortune, and baptized the
soil with the blood it had spilt? Certes, this plan
presented itself bristling with difficulties: but the
greatest of all was Mademoiselle de Montalais herself.
Capricious, variable, close, giddy, free, prudish, a virgin
armed with claws, Erigone stained with grapes, she sometimes
overturned, with a single dash of her white fingers, or with
a single puff from her laughing lips, the edifice which had
exhausted Malicorne’s patience for a month.
Love apart, Malicorne was happy; but this love, which he
could not help feeling, he had the strength to conceal with
care; persuaded that at the lest relaxing of the ties by
which he had bound his Protean female, the demon would
overthrow him and laugh at him. He humbled his mistress by
disdaining her. Burning with desire, when she advanced to
tempt him, he had the art to appear ice, persuaded that if
he opened his arms, she would run away laughing at him. On
her side, Montalais believed she did not love Malicorne;
whilst, on the contrary, in reality she did. Malicorne
repeated to her so often his protestation of indifference,
that she finished sometimes, by believing him; and then she
believed she detested Malicorne. If she tried to bring him
back by coquetry, Malicorne played the coquette better than
she could. But what made Montalais hold to Malicorne in an
indissoluble fashion, was that Malicorne always came cram
full of fresh news from the court and the city; Malicorne
always brought to Blois a fashion, a secret, or a perfume;
that Malicorne never asked for a meeting, but, on the
contrary, required to be supplicated to receive the favors
he burned to obtain. On her side Montalais was no miser with
stories. By her means Malicorne learnt all that passed at
Blois, in the family of the dowager Madame; and he related
to Manicamp tales that made him ready to die with laughing,
which the latter, out of idleness, took ready-made to M. de
Guiche, who carried them to Monsieur.
Such, in two words, was the woof of petty interests and
petty conspiracies which united Blois with Orleans and
Orleans with Paris; and which was about to bring into the
last named city, where she was to produce so great a
revolution, the poor little La Valliere, who was far from
suspecting, as she returned joyfully, leaning on the arm of
her mother, for what a strange future she was reserved. As
to the good man, Malicorne — we speak of the syndic of
Orleans — he did not see more clearly into the present than
others did into the future; and had no suspicion as he
walked, every day, between three and five o’clock, after his
dinner, upon the Place Sainte-Catherine, in his gray coat,
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cut after the fashion of Louis XIII. and his cloth shoes
with great knots of ribbon, that it was he who was paying
for all those bursts of laughter, all those stolen kisses,
all those whisperings, all those little keepsakes, and all
those bubble projects which formed a chain of forty-five
leagues in length, from the palais of Blois to the
Palais-Royal.
CHAPTER 80
Manicamp and Malicorne
Malicorne, then, left Blois, as we have said, and went to