“You do me great honor; but I know very little about architecture.”

“Planchet, you are wrong; you are an excellent architect, quite as good as I am, for the case in question.”

“Thanks, monsieur. But your old friends of the musketeers?”

“I have been, I confess, tempted to speak of the thing to those gentlemen, but they are all absent from their houses. It is vexatious, for I know none more bold or able.”

“Ah! then it appears there will be an opposition, and the enterprise will be disputed?”

“Oh, yes, Planchet, yes.”

“I burn to know the details, monsieur.”