"If you come near Bellecour again, if you are so much as found within the grounds of the park, I'll have you beaten to death by my grooms for your presumption.

Keep you the memory of that promise in mind, Sir Secretary, and let it warn you to avoid Bellecour, as you would a plague-house.

Come, Suzanne," he said, turning abruptly to his daughter, "Enough of this delightful morning have we already wasted on this canaille." With that he offered her his wrist, and so, without so much as another glance at La Boulaye, she took her departure.
The secretary remained where they had left him, pale of face--saving the fortuitous crimson mark which the whip had cut--and very sick at heart.
The heat of the moment being spent, he had leisure to contemplate his plight.

A scorned lover, a beaten man, a dismissed secretary! He looked sorrowfully upon his volume of "The Discourses," and for the first time a doubt crossed his mind touching the wisdom of old Jean Jacques.

Was there would there ever be any remedy for such a condition of things as now prevailed?
Already the trees had hidden the Marquis and his daughter from La Boulaye's sight.