Read "The Story of the Diamond Necklace" by Henry Vizetelly online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A GOLDEN HARVEST. -HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF. -BARONESS D'OLIVA IS GIVEN THE COLD SHOULDER.
The evening following that on which the cardinal was so cleverly duped, young Beugnot happening to find himself in the neighbourhood of the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, looked in at the countess's hôtel on the chance of finding her at home. At this period it was no longer a spacious _appartement_ that she rented, but the entire house; and yet, with the view of deceiving the cardinal, on whose bounty she was now in a large measure dependent, whenever he called upon her she used invariably to receive him in some mean apartment on one of the upper floors.[99] "I was told," says Beugnot, "that the master and mistress were absent, and that only Mademoiselle Colson was within. This made me the more inclined to stay. Mademoiselle Colson was a relation of Madame de la Motte's, whom madame had qualified for and raised to the rank of _dame de compagnie_. She was wanting neither in wit nor malice, and whenever I met her we always made a point of laughing together at the foolishness and extravagance of the heads of the house. They used to tell her nothing; nevertheless she managed to find out everything. ‘I think,' she remarked to me on this occasion, ‘that their royal highnesses are occupied with some grand project. They pass their time in secret counsels, to which the first secretary (Villette) is alone admitted. His reverence the second secretary (Father Loth) is consequently reduced to listening at the door: he makes three journeys a day to the Rue Vieille-du-Temple (to the Palais-Cardinal), without guessing a single word of the messages they confide to him. The monk is inconsolable at this, since he is as curious as an old devotee.'