De Marsay, who did not choose to take upon himself the responsibility of granting it came to tell the princess the matter had been entrusted to safe hands, and that a certain political manager had promised to bring her the result in the course of that evening.
Madame and Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne were announced.

Laurence, whose principles were unyielding, was not only surprised but shocked to see the most illustrious representatives of Legitimacy talking and laughing in a friendly manner with the prime minister of the man whom she never called anything but Monsieur le Duc d'Orleans.

De Marsay, like an expiring lamp, shone with a last brilliancy.

He laid aside for the moment his political anxieties, and Madame de Cinq-Cygne endured him, as they say the Court of Austria endured de Saint-Aulaire; the man of the world effaced the minister of the citizen-king.

But she rose to her feet as though her chair were of red-hot iron when the name was announced of "Monsieur le Comte de Gondreville." "Adieu, madame," she said to the princess in a curt tone.
She left the room with Berthe, measuring her steps to avoid encountering that fatal being.
"You may have caused the loss of Georges' marriage," said the princess to de Marsay, in a low voice.