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 said, little Abbé!" he exclaimed. "My fault, her misfortune. Nevertheless the crime is unpardonable—so no more of her. How shall I reconcile Madame de Sabran and Madame de Parabére? I tell you, they sup with us this very night. You make one, Abbé, of course!" Malletort bowed lower than ever. "But think of these two at enmity across my narrow table! Why the Centaurs and Lapithæ would be a love-feast compared to it. Like my ancestor of Navarre, Monsieur l'Abbé, I fear neither man nor devil, but there are some women, I honestly confess, whose anger I dare not encounter, and that is the truth!"

"I know nothing of women and their ways," answered Malletort, humbly. "It is a science my profession and my inclinations forbid me alike to understand, but I imagine that in gallantry as in chemistry, counteracting influences are most effectual when of a cognate nature to the evil. Similia similibus curantur; and your Highness can have no difficulty, surely, in applying a thousand smiling soft-spoken antidotes to two scowling women."

The Regent shook his head gravely. It was a subject of which he had diligently studied both theory and practice, yet found he knew little more about it than when he began.

"They are all so different," he complained, peevishly, "and yet all so alike in their utter insensibility to reason, their perverted wilfulness in looking on impossibilities as accomplished facts. There is Madame de Sabran wants me to make her a duchess of France! 'How can I make you a duchess of France, madame?' said I. 'Would you have your "mastiff," as you call him, created a duke for your services?' 'He would make a better than so and so, and so and so,' she answered, as coolly as possible, naming half-a-dozen, who it must be confessed are not one bit more respectable! That is another thing about the woman, she always contrives to have a distorted shadow of reason, like a stick in the water, on her side. It was only the other day I made him one of my chamberlains, and now she declares he ought to be given a step of rank to uphold the dignity of the office. How can you reason with such a woman as that?"

"Waste of time, Highness!" answered Malletort, composedly. "They are born not to be instructed, but admired!"