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Rh, not supposing that my father intended that I should be kept at my task like a schoolboy, now that I am old enough to wear a sword, and"—

"There, there, there, there!" exclaimed the count, raising both hands to his ears: "I had no idea of rousing such a hornet's nest by my idle remark. Mademoiselle, let me lead you to the house." And, offering his hand to Valerie with all the stately dignity of the court, he led her on between the beds of roses, which seemed suddenly to lose their color and their fragrance, and up the broken, shallow steps to the terrace, and so into the old château, with its sparse and antique furniture, its mouldering tapestries and tarnished gildings; for the counts of Montarnaud had spent many a fair fortune coming to them in the hand of the heiresses they loved to marry, spent it in war, sometimes for and sometimes against their liege lord, the king; spent it in mad revelry, in gaming, in luxury, in every form of self-delight, until when Raoul, the present count, came to his dignities, he found them so shorn of the means of maintenance that he had spent very nearly all of what remained in dancing attendance first at the court of Louis XIII., that is to say, at the court of Cardinal Richelieu, and then at that of the Regent Anne of Austria, that is to say, at that of Mazarin. Finally he was at present bending his aged knees at the shrine of the young King Louis XIV., who, so far from being the shadow of a prime minister, had given to the ministers, who desired to know upon the death of Mazarin to whom they were to apply for orders, the truly royal answer,—