"It is your roses," said Lisa, laughing, "that make me, what you call lovely. I don't make the roses. But what have you peeping out of your pocket?" she inquired, fearing that the conversation was about to assume a more tender character than she desired; "a note I should think"--
"Ah, yes! I had forgotten," said poor François, with a sigh over his own hopeless perturbation. "It is from Mme. la Contesse to the Colonel de Villefort, and it was to be given without delay."
"Ulysse, Ulysse," cried Lisa, gladly availing herself of this welcome diversion, "here is a note for you."
"Do you not see, mademoiselle," said Ulysse, pettishly, not entirely pleased with François and his flowers, "do you not see that I am watering the colonel's horse? I should think, too, that the bearer of a note might deliver it himself."
François, with a soothing sense of present preferment, was about to make a good-natured reply, when the colloquy was terminated by a sonorous voice from an upper window shouting, "Ulysse!"
"Impossible to use either to-day, _mon colonel_; one limps, and I have taken Mars to the blacksmith's, for he cast a shoe this morning."
"_Sapeisti!_ What am I to ride then? There is the horse of Monsieur le Baron always at our service. He is a nasty, stumbling thing, but if it is very pressing"--
Victor de Villefort looked irresolutely out of the window, and twirled his blonde mustache. He was a man between thirty and forty perhaps, _distingué_ in manner and bearing, and gifted with a charming sympathetic voice.
"Here is a note for you, _mon colonel_," said Lisa, glancing reproachfully at Ulysse, as she tripped lightly across the court-yard, and passing the corridor of red brick, mounted two flights of narrow wooden stairs to the colonel's room.
"Thank you, mademoiselle," said Victor, courteously, as he took the note. "Ulysse shall stay with me always if you say so. Do the roses worn so gracefully on the left side of the head, indicate consent?"
"I wear the roses for the sake of François, the gardener of Madame la Contesse d'Hivry, who brings them to me."
"Ah! I am always allowing myself to be taken by surprise, Lisa," said Victor, opening his note and glancing over its contents. "I never keep pace with fickleness."