Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 2).djvu/227

209 "Come, do not affect indifference, but confess that you are pleased to have it."

"Oh, it is very well as a finish to the toilet. It looks very neat on a black coat buttoned up."

"And makes you resemble the Prince of Wales or the Duke de Reichstadt."

"It is for that reason you see me so early."

"Because you have the order of Charles III., and you wish to announce the good news to me?"

"No, because I passed the night writing letters, five-and-twenty dispatches. I returned home at daybreak, and strove to sleep; but my head ached, and I got up to have a ride for an hour. At the Bois de Boulogne, ennui and hunger attacked me at once, two enemies who rarely accompany each other, and who are yet leagued against me, a sort of Carlist-republican alliance. I then recollected you gave a break fast this morning, and here I am. I am hungry, feed me; I am bored, amuse me."

"It is my duty as your host," returned Albert, ringing the bell, whilst Lucien turned over, with his gold-mounted cane studded with turquoises, the papers that lay on the table. "Germain, a glass of sherry and a biscuit. In the mean time, my dear Lucien, here are cigars contra band, of course; try them, and persuade the minister to sell us such instead of poisoning us with cabbage-leaves."

"Peste! I will do nothing of the kind; the moment they come from government you will find them execrable. Besides, that does not concern the home but the financial department. Address yourself to M. Humann, section of the indirect contributions, Corridor A., No. 26."

"On my word," said Albert, "you astonish me by the extent of your acquaintance. Take a cigar."

"Really, my dear count," replied Lucien, lighting a mariilla at a rose-colored taper that burned in a stand beautifully enameled, and leaning back on the divan "how happy you are to have nothing to do; you do not know your own good fortune!"

"And what would you do, my dear diplomatist," replied Morcerf, with a slight degree of irony in his voice, "if you did nothing? What! private secretary to a minister, plunged at once into European cabals and Parisian intrigues; having kings, and, better still, queens to protect, parties to unite, elections to direct; making more of your cabinet with your pen and your telegraph than Napoleon did of his battle-fields with his sword and his victories; possessing five-and-twenty thousand francs a year, besides your place; a horse, for which Chateau-Renaud offered you four hundred louis, and which you would not part with; a