“Your genius must dispose of those. Send them into a cabaret for a drink, and drive off while they are drinking. That is all detail.”
“But Landry will recognize that I am not Mathieu.”
“You can easily meet that. You can say he is ill, or better, drunk. He has a reputation for getting drunk, and there is nothing like a bad reputation to help a good plan, sometimes.”
“_Ma foi_!” said Camus, “if that is the case, you ought to use Dubarry’s reputation. Well, I agree. But Choiseul ought to make me a duke at least, for it would be worth a dukedom to see Dubarry’s face when she finds out the trick, and I will be out of all that.”
“Rest assured,” said Coigny, “that Choiseul will not forget the men who have helped him; but your reward will come less from him than another quarter.”
“Why, all the women of the Court. And a man with the women on his side can do anything. Ah, there is Madame de Courcelles with the charming Fontrailles. Now, what can Mademoiselle Fontrailles be doing here to-night, for, if I am not greatly mistaken, she is a friend of Dubarry’s?”
Camus caught sight of Mademoiselle Fontrailles.
“_Mon Dieu_!” said he, “what a lovely face! Where has she come from?”
“What?” said Coigny, “do you not know her? She is from Martinique. They call her the ‘Flower of Martinique’—but surely you have seen her before?”
“I have been away from Paris for some weeks, hunting with Rochefort,” said Camus, his eyes still on the girl.
“Ah! that accounts for it,” said Coigny. “She is a new arrival.”
In a moment the introduction was made. Camus’s success with women was due less, perhaps, to his force and personality, than to his knowledge of them. Like Wilkes, he only wanted ten minutes’ start of the handsomest man in town to beat him. With Mademoiselle Fontrailles he was charming, courtly, deferential and graceful.
He knew nothing of Rochefort’s experience with the girl, but he needed no warning, and when the Duc de Soissons came up to claim her as partner, he fancied that he had made a very good impression, as, indeed, he had.
He watched her dancing. If he had made a good impression on her, she had made a deep impression upon him. He watched her with burning eyes, as one might fancy a tiger watching a gazelle, then, turning away, he passed through the crowd to the supper-room.