“Not so bad,” said Beauchamp; “still, I assure you, he passed very well with many people; I saw him at the ministers’ houses.”
“Ah, yes,” said Château-Renaud. “The idea of thinking ministers understand anything about princes!”
“There is something in what you have just said,” said Beauchamp, laughing.
“But,” said Debray to Beauchamp, “if I spoke to the president, you must have been with the procureur.”
“It was an impossibility; for the last week M. de Villefort has secluded himself. It is natural enough; this strange chain of domestic afflictions, followed by the no less strange death of his daughter—”
“Strange? What do you mean, Beauchamp?”
“Oh, yes; do you pretend that all this has been unobserved at the minister’s?” said Beauchamp, placing his eyeglass in his eye, where he tried to make it remain.
“My dear sir,” said Château-Renaud, “allow me to tell you that you do not understand that manoeuvre with the eyeglass half so well as Debray. Give him a lesson, Debray.”
“Stay,” said Beauchamp, “surely I am not deceived.”
“What is it?”
“It is she!”
“Whom do you mean?”
“They said she had left.”
“Mademoiselle Eugénie?” said Château-Renaud; “has she returned?”