"Monsieur le duc has never blamed you," she said to Canalis, "for the
humility with which you bear your fame; why should you attack him for
his modesty?"
"Besides, we have never yet met a woman worthy of my nephew's rank,"
said Mademoiselle d'Herouville. "Some had only the wealth of the
position; others, without fortune, had the wit and birth. I must admit
that we have done well to wait till God granted us an opportunity to
meet one in whom we find the noble blood, the mind, and fortune of a
Duchesse d'Herouville."
"My dear Modeste," said Helene d'Herouville, leading her new friend
apart, "there are a thousand barons in the kingdom, just as there are
a hundred poets in Paris, who are worth as much as he; he is so little
of a great man that even I, a poor girl forced to take the veil for
want of a 'dot,' I would not take him. You don't know what a young man
is who has been for ten years in the hands of a Duchesse de Chaulieu.
None but an old woman of sixty could put up with the little ailments
of which, they say, the great poet is always complaining,--a habit in
Louis XIV. that became a perfectly insupportable annoyance.
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