The leaves from the diary and the whole of the correspondence will be handed to M.de Mussidan as soon as the civil ceremony is completed." With firmly compressed lips and clenched hands, the Count sat listening to these conditions.
"And who can tell me," said he, "that you will keep your engagements, and that these papers will be restored to me at all ?" Tantaine looked at him with a air of pity.
"Your own good sense," answered he.

"What more could we expect to get out of you than your daughter and your money ?" The Count did not answer, but paced up and down the room, eyeing the ambassador keenly, and endeavoring to detect some weak point in his manner of cynicism and audacity.

Then speaking in the calm tone of a man who had made up his mind, he said,-- "You hold me as in a vice, and I admit myself vanquished.

Stringent as your conditions are, I accept them." "That is the right style of way to talk in," remarked Tantaine cheerfully.
"Then," continued the Count, with a ray of hope gleaming in his face, "why should I give my daughter to De Croisenois at all ?--surely this is utterly unnecessary.

What you want is simply six hundred thousand francs; well, you can have them, and leave me Sabine." He paused and waited for the reply, believing that the day was his; but he was wrong.
"That would not be the same thing at all," answered Tantaine.