The meeting of the Board of Managers of the Grand Company broke up,
and--a circumstance that rarely happened--without the customary
debauch. Bigot, preoccupied with his own projects, which reached
far beyond the mere interests of the Company, retired to his couch.
Cadet, Varin, and Penisault, forming an interior circle of the
Friponne, had certain matters to shape for the Company's eye. The
rings of corruption in the Grand Company descended, narrower and
more black and precipitous, down to the bottom where Bigot sat, the
Demiurgos of all.
The Chevalier des Meloises was rather proud of his sister's beauty
and cleverness, and in truth a little afraid of her. They lived
together harmoniously enough, so long as each allowed the other his
or her own way. Both took it, and followed their own pleasures, and
were not usually disagreeable to one another, except when Angelique
commented on what she called his penuriousness, and he upon her
extravagance, in the financial administration of the family of the
Des Meloises.
The Chevalier was highly delighted to-day to be able to inform
Angelique of her good fortune in becoming a partner of the Friponne
and that too by grace of his Excellency the Intendant.
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