A Start in Life

By Honoré de Balzac.

Translated by Clara Bell.

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To whose bright and modest wit I owe the idea of this Scene. Hers be the honor!

A Start in Life

Railroads, in a future now not far distant, must lead to the disappearance of certain industries, and modify others, especially such as are concerned in the various modes of transport commonly used in the neighborhood of Paris. In fact, the persons and the things which form the accessories of this little drama will ere long give it the dignity of an archaeological study. Will not our grandchildren be glad to know something of a time which they will speak of as the old days?

For instance, the picturesque vehicles known as Coucous, which used to stand on the Place de la Concorde and crowd the Cours-la-Reine, which flourished so greatly during a century, and still survived in 1830, exist no more. Even on the occasion of the most attractive rural festivity, hardly one is to be seen on the road in this year 1842.

In 1820 not all the places famous for their situation, and designated as the environs of Paris, had any regular service of coaches. The Touchards, father and son, had however a monopoly of conveyances to and from the largest towns within a radius of fifteen leagues, and their establishment occupied splendid premises in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. In spite of their old standing and their strenuous efforts, in spite of their large capital and all the advantages of strong centralization, Touchards’ service had formidable rivals in the Coucous of the Faubourg Saint-Denis for distances of seven or eight leagues out of Paris. The Parisian has indeed such a passion for the country, that local establishments also held their own in many cases against the Petites Messageries, a name given to Touchards’ short-distance coaches, to distinguish them from the Grandes Messageries, the general conveyance company, in the Rue Montmartre.

At that time the success of the Touchards stimulated speculation; conveyances were put on the road to and from the smallest towns⁠—handsome, quick, and commodious vehicles, starting and returning at fixed hours; and these, in a circuit of ten leagues or so, gave rise to vehement competition. Beaten on the longer distances, the Coucou fell back on short runs, and survived a few years longer. It finally succumbed when the omnibus had proved the possibility of packing eighteen persons into a vehicle drawn by two horses. Nowadays the Coucou, if a bird of such heavy flight is by chance still to be found in the recesses of some store for dilapidated vehicles, would, from its structure and arrangement, be the subject of learned investigations, like Cuvier’s researches on the animals discovered in the lime-quarries of Montmartre.

These smaller companies, being threatened by larger speculations competing, after 1822, with the Touchards, had nevertheless a fulcrum of support in the sympathies of the residents in the places they plied to. The master of the concern, who was both owner and driver of the vehicle, was usually an innkeeper of the district, to whom its inhabitants were as familiar as were their common objects and interests. He was intelligent in fulfilling commissions; he asked less for his little services, and therefore obtained more, than the employees of the Touchards. He was clever at evading the necessity for an excise pass. At a pinch he would infringe the rules as to the number of passengers he might carry. In fact, he was master of the affections of the people. Hence, when a rival appeared in the field, if the old-established conveyance ran on alternate days of the week, there were persons who would postpone their journey to take it in the company of the original driver, even though his vehicle and horses were none of the safest and best.

One of the lines which the Touchards, father and son, tried hard to monopolize, but which was hotly disputed⁠—nay, which is still a subject of dispute with their successors the Toulouses⁠—was that between Paris and Beaumont-sur-Oise, a highly profitable district, since in 1822 three lines of conveyances worked it at once. The Touchards lowered their prices, but in vain, and in vain increased the number of services; in vain they put superior vehicles on the road, the competitors held their own, so profitable is a line running through little towns like Saint-Denis and Saint-Brice, and such a string of villages as Pierrefitte, Groslay, Écouen, Poncelles, Moiselles, Baillet, Monsoult, Maffliers, Franconville, Presles, Nointel, Nerville, and others. The Touchards at last extended their line of service as far as to Chambly; the rivals ran to Chambly. And at the present day the Toulouses go as far as Beauvais.

On this road, the highroad to England, there is a place which is not ill named la Cave [the Cellar], a hollow way leading down into one of the most delightful nooks of the Oise valley, and to the little town of l’Isle-Adam, doubly famous as the native place of the now extinct family de l’Isle-Adam, and as the splendid residence of the Princes of Bourbon-Conti. L’Isle-Adam is a charming little town, flanked by two large hamlets, that of Nogent and that of Parmain, both remarkable for the immense quarries which have furnished the materials for the finest edifices of Paris, and indeed abroad too, for the base and capitals of the theatre at Brussels are of Nogent stone.

Though remarkable for its beautiful points of view, and for famous châteaux built by princes, abbots, or famous architects, as at Cassan, Stors, le Val, Nointel, Persan, etc., this district, in 1822, had as yet escaped competition, and was served by two coach-owners, who agreed to work it between them. This exceptional state of things was based on causes easily explained. From la Cave, where, on the highroad, begins the fine paved way due to the magnificence of the Princes of Conti, to l’Isle-Adam, is a distance of two leagues: no main line coach could diverge so far from the highroad, especially as l’Isle-Adam was at that time the end of things in that direction. The road led thither, and ended there. Of late, a highroad joins the valley of Montromency to that of l’Isle-Adam. Leaving Saint-Denis it passes through Saint-Leu-Taverny, Méru, l’Isle-Adam, and along by the Oise as far as Beaumont. But in 1822 the only road to l’Isle-Adam was that made by the Princes de Conti.

Consequently Pierrotin and his colleague reigned supreme from Paris to l’Isle-Adam, beloved of all the district. Pierrotin’s coach and his friend’s ran by Stors, le Val, Parmain, Champagne, Mours, Prérolles, Nogent, Nerville, and Maffliers. Pierrotin was so well known that the residents at Monsoult, Moiselles, Baillet, and Saint-Brice, though living on the highroad, made use of his coach, in which there was more often a chance of a seat than in the Beaumont diligence, which was always full. Pierrotin and his friendly rival agreed to admiration. When Pierrotin started from l’Isle-Adam, the other set out from Paris and vice-versa. Of the opposing driver, nothing need be said. Pierrotin was the favorite in the line. And of the two, he alone appears on the scene in this veracious history. So it will suffice to say that the two coach-drivers lived on excellent terms, competing in honest warfare, and contending for customers without sharp practice. In Paris, out of economy, they put up at the same inn, using the same yard, the same stable, the same coach-shed, the same office, the same booking clerk. And this fact is enough to show that Pierrotin and his opponents were, as the common folks say, of a very good sort.

That inn, at the corner of the Rue d’Enghien, exists to this day, and is called the Silver Lion. The proprietor of this hostlery⁠—a hostlery from time immemorial for coach-drivers⁠—himself managed a line of vehicles to Dammartin on so sound a basis that his neighbors the Touchards, of the Petites Messageries opposite, never thought of starting a conveyance on that road.

Though the coaches for l’Isle-Adam were supposed to set out punctually, Pierrotin and his friend displayed a degree of indulgence on this point which, while it won them the affections of the natives, brought down severe remonstrances from strangers who were accustomed to the exactitude of the larger public companies; but the two drivers of these vehicles, half diligence, half coucou, always found partisans among their regular customers. In the afternoon the start fixed for four o’clock always dragged on till half-past; and in the morning, though eight was the hour named, the coach never got off before nine.

This system was, however, very elastic. In summer, the golden season for coaches, the time of departure, rigorously punctual as concerned strangers, gave way for natives of the district. This method afforded Pierrotin the chance of pocketing the price of two places for one when a resident in the town came early to secure a place already booked by a bird of passage, who, by ill-luck, was behind time. Such elastic rules would certainly not be approved by a Puritan moralist; but Pierrotin and his colleague justified it by the hard times, by their losses during the winter season, by the necessity they would presently be under of purchasing better carriages, and finally, by an exact application of the rules printed on their tickets, copies of which were of the greatest rarity, and never given but to those travelers who were so perverse as to insist.

Pierrotin, a man of forty, was already the father of a family. He had left the cavalry in 1815 when the army was disbanded, and then this very good fellow had succeeded his father, who drove a coucou between l’Isle-Adam and Paris on somewhat erratic principles. After marrying the daughter of a small innkeeper, he extended and regulated the business, and was noted for his intelligence and military punctuality. Brisk and decisive, Pierrotin⁠—a nickname, no doubt⁠—had a mobile countenance which gave an amusing expression and a semblance of intelligence to a face reddened by exposure to the weather. Nor did he lack the “gift of the gab” which is caught by intercourse with the world, and by seeing different parts of it. His voice, by dint of talking to his horses, and shouting to others to get out of the way, was somewhat harsh, but he could soften it to a customer.

His costume, that of coach-drivers of the superior class, consisted of stout, strong boots, heavy with nails, and made at l’Isle-Adam, trousers of bottle-green velveteen, and a jacket of the same, over which, in the exercise of his functions, he wore a blue blouse, embroidered in colors on the collar, shoulder-pieces, and wristbands. On his head was a cap with a peak. His experience of military service had stamped on Pierrotin the greatest respect for social superiority, and a habit of obedience to people of the upper ranks; but while he was ready to be on familiar terms with the modest citizen, he was always respectful to women, of whatever class. At the same time, the habit of “carting folks about,” to use his own expression, had led him to regard his travelers as parcels; though, being on feet, they demanded less care than the other merchandise, which was the aim and end of the service.

Warned by the general advance, which since the peace begun to tell on his business, Pierrotin was determined not to be beaten by the progress of the world. Ever since the last summer season he had talked a great deal of a certain large conveyance he had ordered of Farry, Breilmann and Co., the best diligence builders, as being needed by the constant increase of travelers. Pierrotin’s plant at that time consisted of two vehicles. One, which did duty for the winter, and the only one he ever showed to the tax-collector, was of the coucou species. The bulging sides of this vehicle allowed it to carry six passengers on two seats as hard as iron, though covered with yellow worsted velvet. These seats were divided by a wooden bar, which could be removed at pleasure or refixed in two grooves in the sides, at the height of a man’s back. This bar, perfidiously covered by Pierrotin with yellow velvet, and called by him a back to the seat, was the cause of much despair to the travelers from the difficulty of moving and readjusting it. If the board was painful to fix, it was far more so to the shoulder-blades when it was fitted; on the other hand, if it was not unshipped, it made entrance and egress equally perilous, especially to women.

Though each seat of this vehicle, which bulged at the sides like a woman before childbirth, was licensed to hold no more than three passengers, it was not unusual to see eight packed in it like herrings in a barrel. Pierrotin declared that they were all the more comfortable, since they formed a compact and immovable mass, whereas three were constantly thrown against each other, and often ran the risk of spoiling their hats against the roof of the vehicle by reason of the violent jolting on the road. In front of the body of this carriage there was a wooden box-seat, Pierrotin’s driving-seat, which could also carry three passengers, who were designated, as all the world knows, as “lapins” (rabbits). Occasionally, Pierrotin would accommodate four lapins, and then sat askew on a sort of box below the front seat for the lapins to rest their feet on; this was filled with straw or such parcels as could not be injured.

The body of the vehicle, painted yellow, was ornamented by a band of bright blue, on which might be read in white letters, on each side, L’Isle-Adam⁠—Paris; and on the back, Service de l’Isle-Adam. Our descendants will be under a mistake if they imagine that this conveyance could carry no more than thirteen persons, including Pierrotin. On great occasions three more could be seated in a square compartment covered with tarpaulin in which trunks, boxes, and parcels were generally piled; but Pierrotin was too prudent to let any but regular customers sit there, and only took them up three or four hundred yards outside the barrier. These passengers in the poulailler, or hen-coop, the name given by the conductors to this part of a coach, were required to get out before reaching any village on the road where there was a station of gendarmerie; for the overloading, forbidden by the regulations for the greater safety of travelers, was in these cases so excessive, that the gendarme⁠—always Pierrotin’s very good friend⁠—could not have excused himself from reporting such a flagrant breach of rules. But thus Pierrotin’s vehicle, on certain Saturday evenings and Monday mornings, carted out fifteen passengers; and then to help pull it, he gave his large but aged horse, named Rougeot, the assistance of a second nag about as big as a pony, which he could never sufficiently praise. This little steed was a mare called Bichette; and she ate little, she was full of spirit, nothing could tire her, she was worth her weight in gold!

“My wife would not exchange her for that great lazy beast Rougeot!” Pierrotin would exclaim, when a traveler laughed at him about this concentrated extract of horse.

The difference between this carriage and the other was, that the second had four wheels. This vehicle, a remarkable structure, always spoken of as “the four-wheeled coach,” could hold seventeen passengers, being intended to carry fourteen. It rattled so preposterously that the folks in l’Isle-Adam would say, “Here comes Pierrotin!” when he had but just come out of the wood that hangs on the slope to the valley. It was divided into two lobes, one of which, called the intérieur, the body of the coach, carried six passengers on two seats, and the other, a sort of cab stuck on in front, was styled the coupé. This coupé could be closed by an inconvenient and eccentric arrangement of glass windows, which would take too long to describe in this place. The four-wheeled coach also had at top a sort of gig with a hood, into which Pierrotin packed six travelers; it closed with leather curtains. Pierrotin himself had an almost invisible perch below the glass windows of the coupé.

The coach to l’Isle-Adam only paid the taxes levied on public vehicles for the coucou, represented to carry six travelers, and whenever Pierrotin turned out the “four-wheeled coach” he took out a special license. This may seem strange indeed in these days; but at first the tax on vehicles, imposed somewhat timidly, allowed the owners of coaches to play these little tricks, which gave them the pleasure of “putting their thumbs to their noses” behind the collector’s back, as they phrased it. By degrees, however, the hungry Exchequer grew strict: it allowed no vehicle to take the road without displaying the two plates which now certify that their capacity is registered and the tax paid. Everything, even a tax, has its age of innocence, and towards the end of 1822 that age was not yet over. Very often, in summer, the four-wheeled coach and the covered chaise made the journey in company, carrying in all thirty passengers, while Pierrotin paid only for six.

On these golden days the convoy started from the Faubourg Saint-Denis at half-past four, and arrived in style at l’Isle-Adam by ten o’clock at night. And then Pierrotin, proud of his run, which necessitated the hire of extra horses, would say, “We have made a good pace today!” To enable him to do nine leagues in five hours with his machinery, he did not stop, as the coaches usually do on this road, at Saint-Brice, Moisselles, and la Cave.

The Silver Lion inn occupied a plot of ground running very far back. Though the front to the Rue Saint-Denis has no more than three or four windows, there was at that time, on one side of the long yard, with the stables at the bottom, a large house backing on the wall of the adjoining property. The entrance was through an arched way under the first floor, and there was standing-room here for two or three coaches. In 1822, the booking-office for all the lines that put up at the Silver Lion was kept by the innkeeper’s wife, who had a book for each line; she took the money, wrote down the names, and good-naturedly accommodated passengers’ luggage in her vast kitchen. The travelers were quite satisfied with this patriarchally free-and-easy mode of business. If they came too early, they sat down by the fire within the immense chimney-place, or lounged in the passage, or went to the café de l’Echiquier, at the corner of the street of that name, parallel to the Rue d’Enghien, from which it is divided by a few houses only.

Quite early in the autumn of that year, one Saturday morning, Pierrotin, his hands stuffed through holes in his blouse and into his pockets, was standing at the front gate of the Silver Lion, whence he had a perspective view of the inn kitchen, and beyond it of the long yard and the stables at the end, like black caverns. The Dammartin diligence had just started, and was lumbering after Touchard’s coaches. It was past eight o’clock. Under the wide archway, over which was inscribed on a long board, Hotel du Lion d’Argent, the stableman and coach-porters were watching the vehicles start at the brisk pace which deludes the traveler into the belief that the horses will continue to keep it up.

“Shall I bring out the horses, master?” said Pierrotin’s stable-boy, when there was nothing more to be seen.

“A quarter-past eight, and I see no passengers,” said Pierrotin. “What the deuce has become of them? Put the horses to, all the same.⁠—No parcels neither. Bless us and save us! This afternoon, now, he won’t know how to stow his passengers, as it is so fine, and I have only four booked. There’s a pretty outlook for a Saturday! That’s always the way when you’re wanting the ready! It’s dog’s work, and work for a dog!”

“And if you had any, where would you stow ’em? You have nothing but your two-wheel cab,” said the luggage-porter, trying to smooth down Pierrotin.

“And what about my new coach?”

“Then there is such a thing as your new coach?” asked the sturdy Auvergnat, grinning and showing his front teeth, as white and as broad as almonds.

“You old good-for-nothing! Why, she will take the road tomorrow, Sunday, and we want eighteen passengers to fill her!”

“Oh, ho! a fine turnout! that’ll make the folk stare!” said the Auvergnat.

“A coach like the one that runs to Beaumont, I can tell you! Brand new, painted in red and gold, enough to make the Touchards burst with envy! It will take three horses. I have found a fellow to Rougeot, and Bichette will trot unicorn like a good ’un.⁠—Come, harness up,” said Pierrotin, who was looking towards the Porte Saint-Denis while cramming his short pipe with tobacco, “I see a lady out there, and a little man with bundles under his arm. They are looking for the Silver Lion, for they would have nothing to say to the coucous on the stand. Hey day, I seem to know the lady for a customer.”

“You often get home filled up after starting empty,” said his man.

“But no parcels!” replied Pierrotin. “By the Mass! What devil’s luck!”

And Pierrotin sat down on one of the enormous curbstones which protected the lower part of the wheels from the friction of the axles, but he wore an anxious and thoughtful look that was not usual with him. This dialogue, apparently so trivial, had stirred up serious anxieties at the bottom of Pierrotin’s heart. And what could trouble Pierrotin’s heart but the thought of a handsome coach? To cut a dash on the road, to rival the Touchards, extend his service, carry passengers who might congratulate him on the increased convenience due to the improvements in coach-building, instead of hearing constant complaints of his drags, this was Pierrotin’s laudable ambition.

Now the worthy man, carried away by his desire to triumph over his colleague, and to induce him some day perhaps to leave him without a competitor on the road to l’Isle-Adam, had overstrained his resources. He had ordered his coach from Farry, Breilmann, and Co., the makers who had lately introduced English coach-springs in the place of the swan’s-neck and other old-fashioned French springs; but these hard-hearted and mistrustful makers would only deliver the vehicle for ready cash. Not caring, indeed, to build a conveyance so unsalable if it were left on their hands, these shrewd tradesmen had not undertaken the job till Pierrotin had paid them two thousand francs on account. To satisfy their justifiable requirements, Pierrotin had exhausted his savings and his credit. He had bled his wife, his father-in-law, and his friends. He had been to look at the superb vehicle the day before in the painter’s shop; it was ready, and waiting to take the road, but in order to see it there on the following day he must pay up.

Hence Pierrotin was in need of a thousand francs! Being in debt to the innkeeper for stable-room, he dared not borrow the sum of him. For lack of this thousand francs, he risked losing the two thousand already paid in advance, to say nothing of five hundred, the cost of Rougeot the second, and three hundred for new harness, for which, however, he had three months’ credit. And yet, urged by the wrath of despair and the folly of vanity, he had just declared that his coach would start on the morrow, Sunday. In paying the fifteen hundred francs on account of the two thousand five hundred, he had hoped that the coach-makers’ feelings might be touched so far that they would let him have the vehicle; but, after three minutes’ reflection, he exclaimed:

“No, no! they are sharks, perfect skinflints.⁠—Supposing I were to apply to Monsieur Moreau, the steward at Presles⁠—he is such a good fellow, that he would, perhaps, take my note of hand at six months’ date,” thought he, struck by a new idea.

At this instant, a servant out of livery, carrying a leather trunk, on coming across from the Touchards’ office, where he had failed to find a place vacant on the Chambly coach starting at one o’clock, said to the driver:

“Pierrotin?⁠—Is that you?”

“What then?” said Pierrotin.

“If you can wait less than a quarter of an hour, you can carry my master; if not, I will take his portmanteau back again, and he must make the best of a chaise off the stand.”

“I will wait two⁠—three-quarters of an hour, and five minutes more to that, my lad,” said Pierrotin, with a glance at the smart little leather trunk, neatly strapped, and fastened with a brass lock engraved with a coat-of-arms.

“Very good, then, there you are,” said the man, relieving his shoulder of the trunk, which Pierrotin lifted, weighed in his hand, and scrutinized.

“Here,” said he to his stable-boy, “pack it round with soft hay, and put it in the boot at the back.⁠—There is no name on it,” said he.

“There are monseigneur’s arms,” replied the servant.

“Monseigneur? worth his weight in gold!⁠—Come and have a short drink,” said Pierrotin, with a wink, as he led the way to the café of the Echiquiers.⁠—“Two of absinthe,” cried he to the waiter as they went in.⁠—“But who is your master, and where is he bound? I never saw you before,” said Pierrotin to the servant as they clinked glasses.

“And for very good reasons,” replied the footman. “My master does not go your way once a year, and always in his own carriage. He prefers the road by the Orge valley, where he has the finest park near Paris, a perfect Versailles, a family estate, from which he takes his name.⁠—Don’t you know Monsieur Moreau?”

“The steward at Presles?” said Pierrotin.

“Well, Monsieur le Comte is going to spend two days at Presles.”

“Oh, ho, then my passenger is the Comte de Sérizy!” cried Pierrotin.

“Yes, my man, no less. But, mind, he sends strict orders. If you have any of the people belonging to your parts in your chaise, do not mention the Count’s name; he wants to travel incognito, and desired me to tell you so, and promise you a handsome tip.”

“Hah! and has this hide-and-seek journey anything to do, by any chance, with the bargain that old Léger, the farmer at les Moulineaux, wants to make?”

“I don’t know,” replied the man; “but the fat is in the fire. Last evening I was sent to the stables to order the chaise à la Daumont, by seven this morning, to drive to Presles; but at seven my master countermanded it. Augustin, his valet, ascribes this change of plan to the visit of a lady, who seemed to have come from the country.”

“Can anyone have had anything to say against Monsieur Moreau? The best of men, the most honest, the king of men, I say! He might have made a deal more money than he has done if he had chosen, take my word for it!⁠—”

“Then he was very foolish,” said the servant sententiously.

“Then Monsieur de Sérizy is going to live at Presles at last? The château has been refurnished and done up,” said Pierrotin after a pause. “Is it true that two hundred thousand francs have been spent on it already?”

“If you or I had the money that has been spent there, we could set up in the world.⁠—If Madame la Comtesse goes down there, and Moreaus’ fun will be over,” added the man, with mysterious significance.

“A good man is Monsieur Moreau,” repeated Pierrotin, who was still thinking of borrowing the thousand francs from the steward; “a man that makes his men work, and does not spare them; who gets all the profit out of the land, and for his master’s benefit too. A good man! He often comes to Paris, and always by my coach; he gives me something handsome for myself, and always has a lot of parcels to and fro. Three or four a day, sometimes for monsieur and sometimes for madame; a bill of fifty francs a month say, only on the carrier’s score. Though madame holds her head a little above her place, she is fond of her children; I take them to school for her and bring them home again. And she always gives me five francs, and your biggest pot would not do more. And whenever I have any one from them or to them, I always drive right up to the gates of the house⁠—I could not do less, now, could I?”

“They say that Monsieur Moreau had no more than a thousand crowns in the world when Monsieur le Comte put him in as land steward at Presles?” said the servant.

“But in seventeen years’ time⁠—since 1806⁠—the man must have made something,” replied Pierrotin.

“To be sure,” said the servant, shaking his head. “And masters are queer too. I hope, for Moreau’s sake, that he has feathered his nest.”

“I often deliver hampers at your house in the Chaussée-d’Antin,” said Pierrotin, “but I have never had the privilege of seeing either the master or his lady.”

“Monsieur le Comte is a very good sort,” said the man confidentially; “but if he wants you to hold your tongue about his cognito, there is a screw loose you may depend.⁠—At least, that is what we think at home. For why else should he counter-order the traveling carriage? Why ride in a public chaise? A peer of France might take a hired chaise, you would think.”

“A hired chaise might cost him as much as forty francs for the double journey; for, I can tell, if you don’t know our road, it is fit for squirrels to climb. Everlastingly up and down!” said Pierrotin. “Peer of France or tradesman, everybody looks at both sides of a five-franc piece.⁠—If this trip means mischief to Monsieur Moreau⁠—dear, dear, I should be vexed indeed if any harm came to him. By the Mass! Can no way be found of warning him? For he is a real good ’un, an honest sort, the king of men, I say⁠—”

“Pooh! Monsieur le Comte is much attached to Monsieur Moreau,” said the other. “But if you will take a bit of good advice from me, mind your own business, and let him mind his. We all have quite enough to do to take care of ourselves. You just do what you are asked to do; all the more because it does not pay to play fast and loose with monseigneur. Add to that, the Count is generous. If you oblige him that much,” said the man, measuring off the nail of one finger, “he will reward you that much,” and he stretched out his arm.

This judicious hint, and yet more the illustrative figure, coming from a man so high in office as the Comte de Sérizy’s second footman, had the effect of cooling Pierrotin’s zeal for the steward of Presles.

“Well, good day, Monsieur Pierrotin,” said the man.

A short sketch of the previous history of the Comte de Sérizy and his steward is here necessary to explain the little drama about to be played in Pierrotin’s coach.

Monsieur Hugret de Sérizy is descended in a direct line from the famous Président Hugret, ennobled by Francis the First. They bear as arms party per pale or and sable, an orle and two lozenges counter changed. Motto, I Semper Melius eris, which, like the two winders assumed as supporters, shows the modest pretence of the citizen class at a time when each rank of society had its own place in the State, and also the artlessness of the age in the punning motto, where eris with the I at the beginning, and the final S of Melius, represent the name Serisi of the estate, whence the title.

The present Count’s father was a President of Parlement before the Revolution. He himself, a member of the High Council of State in 1787, at the early age of two-and-twenty, was favorably known for certain reports on some delicate matters. He did not emigrate during the Revolution, but remained on his lands of Sérizy, near Arpajon, where the respect felt for his father protected him from molestation.

After spending a few years in nursing the old President, whom he lost in 1794, he was elected to the Council of Five Hundred, and took up his legislative functions as a distraction from his grief.

After the eighteenth Brumaire, Monsieur de Sérizy became the object⁠—as did all the families connected with the old Parlements⁠—of the First Consul’s attentions, and by him he was appointed a Councillor of State to reorganize one of the most disorganized branches of the Administration. Thus this scion of a great historical family became one of the most important wheels in the vast and admirable machinery due to Napoleon. The State Councillor ere long left his department to be made a Minister. The Emperor created him Count and Senator, and he was proconsul to two different kingdoms in succession.

In 1806, at the age of forty, he married the sister of the ci-devant Marquis de Ronquerolles, and widow, at the age of twenty, of Gaubert, one of the most distinguished of the Republican Generals, who left her all his wealth. This match, suitable in point of rank, doubled the Comte de Sérizy’s already considerable fortune; he was now the brother-in-law of the ci-devant Marquis du Rouvre, whom Napoleon created Count and appointed to be his chamberlain.

In 1814, worn out with incessant work, Monsieur de Sérizy, whose broken health needed rest, gave up all his appointments, left the district of which Napoleon had made him Governor, and came to Paris, where the Emperor was compelled by ocular evidence to concede his claims. This indefatigable master, who could not believe in fatigue in other people, had at first supposed the necessity that prompted the Comte de Sérizy to be simple defection. Though the Senator was not in disgrace, it was said that he had cause for complaint of Napoleon. Consequently, when the Bourbons came back, Louis XVIII, whom Monsieur de Sérizy acknowledged as his legitimate sovereign, granted to the Senator, now a peer of France, the highly confidential post of Steward of his Privy Purse, and made him a Minister of State.

On the 20th March, Monsieur de Sérizy did not follow the King to Ghent; he made it known to Napoleon that he remained faithful to the House of Bourbon, and accepted no peerage during the hundred days, but spent that brief reign on his estate of Sérizy. After the Emperor’s second fall, the Count naturally resumed his seat in the Privy Council, was one of the Council of State, and Liquidator on behalf of France in the settlement of the indemnities demanded by foreign powers.

He had no love of personal magnificence, no ambition even, but exerted great influence in public affairs. No important political step was ever taken without his being consulted, but he never went to Court, and was seldom seen in his own drawing-room. His noble life, devoted to work from the first, ended by being perpetual work and nothing else. The Count rose at four in the morning in all seasons, worked till midday, then took up his duties as a Peer, or as Vice-President of the Council, and went to bed at nine.

Monsieur de Sérizy had long worn the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor; he also had the orders of the Golden Fleece, of Saint Andrew of Russia, of the Prussian Eagle; in short, almost every order of the European Courts. No one was less conspicuous or more valuable than he in the world of politics. As may be supposed, to a man of his temper the flourish of Court favor and worldly success were a matter of indifference.

But no man, unless he is a priest, can live such a life without some strong motive; and his mysterious conduct had its key⁠—a cruel one. The Count had loved his wife before he married her, and in him this passion had withstood all the domestic discomforts of matrimony with a widow who remained mistress of herself, after as well as before her second marriage, and who took all the more advantage of her liberty because Monsieur de Sérizy indulged her as a mother indulges a spoilt child. Incessant work served him as a shield against his heartfelt woes, buried with the care that a man engaged in politics takes to hide such secrets. And he fully understood how ridiculous jealousy would be in the eyes of the world, which would certainly never have admitted the possibility of conjugal passion in a timeworn official.

How was it that his wife had thus bewitched him from the first days of marriage? Why had he suffered in those early days without taking his revenge? Why did he no longer dare to be revenged? And why, deluded by hope, had he allowed time to slip away? By what means had his young, pretty, clever wife reduced him to subjection? The answer to these questions would require a long story, out of place in this “Scene,” and women, if not men, may be able to guess it. At the same time, it may be observed that the Count’s incessant work and many sorrows had unfortunately done much to deprive him of the advantages indispensable to a man who has to compete with unfavorable comparisons. The saddest perhaps of all the Count’s secrets was the fact that his wife’s repulsion was partly justified by ailments which he owed entirely to overwork. Kind, nay, more than kind, to his wife, he made her mistress in her own house; she received all Paris, she went into the country, or she came back again, precisely as though she were still a widow; he took care of her money, and supplied her luxuries as if he had been her agent.

The Countess held her husband in the highest esteem, indeed, she liked his turn of wit. Her approbation could give him pleasure, and thus she could do what she liked with the poor man by sitting and chatting with him for an hour. Like the great nobles of former days, the Count so effectually protected his wife that he wouid have regarded any slur cast on her reputation as an unpardonable insult to himself. The world greatly admired his character, and Madame de Sérizy owed much to her husband. Any other woman, even though she belonged to so distinguished a family as that of Ronquerolles, might have found herself disgraced forever. The Countess was very ungrateful⁠—but charming in her ingratitude. And from time to time she would pour balm on the Count’s wounds.

We must now explain the cause of the Minister’s hurried journey and wish to remain unknown.

A rich farmer of Beaumont-sur-Oise, named Léger, held a farm of which the various portions were all fractions of the estate owned by the Count, thus impairing the splendid property of Presles. The farmlands belonged to a townsman of Beaumont-sur-Oise, one Margueron. The lease he had granted to Léger in 1799, at a time when the advance since made in agriculture could not be foreseen, was nearly run out, and the owner had refused Léger’s terms for renewing it. Long since, Monsieur de Sérizy, wanting to be quit of the worry and squabbling that come of such enclosed plots, had hoped to be able to buy the farm, having heard that Monsieur Margueron’s sole ambition was to see his only son, a modest official, promoted to be collector of the revenue at Senlis.

Moreau had hinted to his master that he had a dangerous rival in the person of old Léger. The farmer, knowing that he could run up the land to a high price by selling it piecemeal to the Count, was capable of paying a sum so high as to outbid the profit derivable from the collectorship to be bestowed on the younger Margueron. Two days since, the Count, who wanted to have done with the matter, had sent for his notary Alexandre Crottat, and Derville his solicitor, to inquire into the state of the affair. Though Crottat and Derville cast doubts on the Steward’s zeal⁠—and, indeed, it was a puzzling letter from him that gave rise to this consultation⁠—the Count defended Moreau, who had, he said, served him faithfully for seventeen years.

“Well,” Derville replied, “I can only advise your lordship to go in person to Presles and ask this Margueron to dinner. Crottat will send down his head-clerk with a form of sale ready drawn out, leaving blank pages or lines for the insertion of descriptions of the plots and the necessary titles. Your Excellency will do well to go provided with a cheque for part of the purchase-money in case of need, and not to forget the letter appointing the son to the collectorship at Senlis. If you do not strike on the nail, the farm will slip through your fingers. You have no idea, Monsieur le Comte, of peasant cunning. Given a peasant on one side and a diplomat on the other, the peasant will win the day.”

Crottat confirmed this advice, which, from the footman’s report to Pierrotin, the Count had evidently adopted. On the day before, the Count had sent a note to Moreau by the Beaumont diligence, desiring him to invite Margueron to dinner, as he meant to come to some conclusion concerning the Moulineaux farmlands.

Before all this, the Count had given orders for the restoration of the living-rooms at Presles, and Monsieur Grindot, a fashionable architect, went down there once a week. So, while treating for his acquisition, Monsieur de Sérizy proposed inspecting the works at the same time and the effect of the new decorations. He intended to give his wife a surprise by taking her to Presles, and the restoration of the château was a matter of pride to him. What event, then, could have happened, that the Count, who, only the day before, was intending to go overtly to Presles, should now wish to travel thither incognito, in Pierrotin’s chaise?

Here a few words are necessary as to the antecedent history of the steward at Presles.

This man, Moreau, was the son of a proctor in a provincial town, who at the time of the Revolution had been made a magistrate (procureur-syndic) at Versailles. In this position the elder Moreau had been largely instrumental in saving the property and life of the Sérizys, father and son. Citizen Moreau had belonged to the party of Danton; Robespierre, implacable in revenge, hunted him down, caught him, and had him executed at Versailles. The younger Moreau, inheriting his father’s doctrines and attachments, got mixed up in one of the conspiracies plotted against the First Consul on his accession to power. Then Monsieur de Sérizy, anxious to pay a debt of gratitude, succeeded in effecting Moreau’s escape after he was condemned to death; in 1804 he asked and obtained his pardon; he at first found him a place in his office, and afterwards made him his secretary and manager of his private affairs.

Some time after his patron’s marriage, Moreau fell in love with the Countess’ maid and married her. To avoid the unpleasantly false position in which he was placed by this union⁠—and there were many such at the Imperial Court⁠—he asked to be appointed land steward at Presles, where his wife could play the lady, and where, in a neighborhood of small folks, they would neither of them be hurt in their own conceits. The Count needed a faithful agent at Presles, because his wife preferred to reside at Sérizy, which is no more than five leagues from Paris. Moreau was familiar with all his affairs, and he was intelligent; before the Revolution he had studied law under his father. So Monsieur de Sérizy said to him:

“You will not make a fortune, for you have tied a millstone round your neck; but you will be well off, for I will provide for that.”

And, in fact, the Count gave Moreau a fixed salary of a thousand crowns, and a pretty little lodge to live in beyond the outbuildings; he also allowed him so many cords of wood a year out of the plantations for fuel, so much straw, oats, and hay for two horses, and a certain proportion of the payments in kind. A sous-préfet is less well off.

During the first eight years of his stewardship, Moreau managed the estate conscientiously, and took an interest in his work. The Count, when he came down to inspect the domain, to decide on purchases or sanction improvements, was struck by Moreau’s faithful service, and showed his approbation by handsome presents. But when Moreau found himself the father of a girl⁠—his third child⁠—he was so completely established at his ease at Presles, that he forgot how greatly he was indebted to Monsieur de Sérizy for such unusually liberal advantages. Thus in 1816, the steward, who had hitherto done no more than help himself freely, accepted from a wood-merchant a bonus of twenty-five thousand francs, with the promise of a rise, for signing an agreement for twelve years allowing the contractor to cut fire-logs in the woods of Presles. Moreau argued thus: He had no promise of a pension; he was the father of a family; the Count certainly owed him so much by way of premium on nearly ten years’ service. He was already lawfully possessed of sixty thousand francs in savings; with this sum added to it he could purchase for a hundred and twenty thousand a farm in the vicinity of Champagne, a hamlet on the right bank of the Oise a little way above l’Isle-Adam.

The stir of politics hindered the Count and the country-folks from taking cognizance of this investment; the business was indeed transacted in the name of Madame Moreau, who was supposed to have come into some money from an old great-aunt in her own part of the country, at Saint-Lô.

When once the steward had tasted the delicious fruits of ownership, though his conduct was still apparently honesty itself, he never missed an opportunity of adding to his clandestine wealth; the interests of his three children served as an emollient to quench the ardors of his honesty, and we must do him the justice to say that while he was open to a bribe, took care of himself in concluding a bargain, and strained his rights to the last point, he was still honest in the eye of the law; no proof could have been brought in support of any accusation. According to the jurisprudence of the least dishonest of Paris cooks, he shared with his master the profits due to his sharp practice. This way of making a fortune was a matter of conscience⁠—nothing more. Energetic, and fully alive to the Count’s interests, Moreau looked out all the more keenly for good opportunities of driving a bargain, since he was sure of a handsome douceur. Presles was worth sixty-two thousand francs in cash rents; and throughout the district, for ten leagues round, the saying was, “Monsieur de Sérizy has a second self in Moreau!”

Moreau, like a prudent man, had, since 1817, invested his salary and his profits year by year in the funds, feathering his nest in absolute secrecy. He had refused various business speculations on the plea of want of money, and affected poverty so well to the Count that he had obtained two scholarships for his boys at the Collège Henri IV. And, at this moment, Moreau owned a hundred and twenty thousand francs in reduced consuls, then paying five percent, and quoted at eighty. These unacknowledged hundred and twenty thousand francs, and his farm at Champagne, to which he had made additions, amounted to a fortune of about two hundred and eighty thousand francs, yielding an income of sixteen thousand francs a year.

This, then, was the steward’s position at the time when the Count wished to purchase the farm of les Moulineaux, of which the possession had become indispensable to his comfort. This farm comprehended ninety-six plots of land, adjoining, bordering, and marching with the estate of Presles, in many cases indeed completely surrounded by the Count’s property, like a square in the middle of a chessboard, to say nothing of the dividing hedges and ditches, which gave rise to constant disputes when a tree was to be cut down if it stood on debatable ground. Any other Minister of State would have fought twenty lawsuits a year over the lands of les Moulineaux.

Old Léger wanted to buy them only to sell to the Count; and to make the thirty or forty thousand francs of profit he hoped for, he had long been endeavoring to come to terms with Moreau. Only three days before this critical Saturday, farmer Léger, driven by press of circumstances, had, standing out in the fields, clearly demonstrated to the steward how he could invest the Comte de Sérizy’s money at two and a half percent in purchasing other plots, that is to say, could, as usual, seem to be serving the Count’s interests while pocketing the bonus of forty thousand francs offered him on the transaction.

“And on my honor,” said the steward to his wife as they went to bed that evening, “if I can make fifty thousand francs on the purchase of les Moulineaux⁠—for the Count will give me ten thousand at least⁠—we will retire to l’Isle-Adam to the Pavillon de Nogent.”

This pavillon is a charming little house built for a lady by the Prince de Conti in a style of prodigal elegance.

“I should like that,” said his wife. “The Dutchman who has been living there has done it up very handsomely, and he will let us have it for thirty thousand francs, since he is obliged to go back to the Indies.”

“It is but a stone’s throw from Champagne,” Moreau went on. “I have hopes of being able to buy the farm and mill at Mours for a hundred thousand francs. We should thus have ten thousand francs a year out of land, one of the prettiest places in all the valley, close to our farm lands, and six thousand francs a year still in the funds.”

“And why should you not apply to be appointed Justice of the Peace at l’Isle-Adam? It would give us importance and fifteen hundred francs a year more.”

“Yes, I have thought of that.”

In this frame of mind, on learning that his patron was coming to Presles, and wished him to invite Margueron to dinner on Saturday, Moreau at once sent off a messenger, who delivered a note to the Count’s valet too late in the evening for it to be delivered to Monsieur de Sérizy; but Augustin laid it, as was usual, on his master’s desk. In this letter Moreau begged the Count not to take so much trouble; to leave the matter to his management. By his account Margueron no longer wished to sell the lands in one lot, but talked of dividing the farm into ninety-six plots. This, at any rate, he must be persuaded to give up; and perhaps, said the steward, it might be necessary to find someone to lend his name as a screen.

Now, everybody has enemies. The steward of Presles and his wife had given offence to a retired officer named de Reybert and his wife. From stinging words and pinpricks they had come to daggers drawn. Monsieur de Reybert breathed nothing but vengeance; he aimed at getting Moreau deposed from his place and filling it himself. These two ideas are twins. Hence the agent’s conduct, narrowly watched for two years past, had no secrets from the Reyberts. At the very time when Moreau was despatching his letter to Monsieur de Sérizy, Reybert had sent his wife to Paris. Madame de Reybert so strongly insisted on seeing the Count, that, being refused at nine in the evening, when he was going to bed, she was shown into his study by seven o’clock next morning.

“Monseigneur,” said she to the Minister, “my husband and I are incapable of writing an anonymous letter. I am Madame de Reybert, née de Corroy. My husband has a pension of no more than six hundred francs a year, and we live at Presles, where your land-steward exposes us to insult upon insult though we are gentlefolks.⁠—Monsieur de Reybert, who has no love of intrigue⁠—far from it!⁠—retired as a Captain of Artillery in 1816 after twenty years’ service, but he never came under the Emperor’s eye, Monsieur le Comte; and you must know how slowly promotion came to those who did not serve under the Master himself; and besides, my husband’s honesty and plain speaking did not please his superiors.

“For three years my husband has been watching your steward for the purpose of depriving him of his place.⁠—We are outspoken, you see. Moreau has made us his enemies, and we have kept our eyes open. I have come therefore to tell you that you are being tricked in this business of the Moulineaux farm lands. You are to be cheated of a hundred thousand francs, which will be shared between the notary, Léger, and Moreau. You have given orders that Margueron is to be asked to dinner, and you intend to go to Presles tomorrow; but Margueron will be ill, and Léger is so confident of getting the farm that he is in Paris realizing enough capital. As we have enlightened you, if you want an honest agent, engage my husband. Though of noble birth, he will serve you as he served his country. Your steward has made and saved two hundred and fifty thousand francs, so he is not to be pitied.”

The Count thanked Madame de Reybert very coldly and answered her with empty speeches, for he detested an informer; still, as he remembered Derville’s suspicions, he was shaken in his mind, and then his eye fell on Moreau’s letter; he read it, and in those assurances of devotion, and the respectful remonstrances as to the want of confidence implied by his intention of conducting this business himself, he saw the truth about Moreau.

“Corruption has come with wealth, as usual,” said he to himself.

He had questioned Madame de Reybert less to ascertain the details than to give himself time to study her, and he had then written a line to his notary to desire him not to send his clerk to Presles, but to go there himself and meet him at dinner.

“If you should have formed a bad opinion of me, Monsieur le Comte, for the step I have taken unknown to my husband,” said Madame Reybert in conclusion, “you must at least be convinced that we have obtained our knowledge as concerning your steward by perfectly natural means; the most sensitive conscience can find nothing to blame us for.”

Madame de Reybert née de Corroy held herself as straight as a pikestaff.

The Count’s rapid survey took in a face pitted by the smallpox till it looked like a colander, a lean, flat figure, a pair of eager, light-colored eyes, fair curls flattened on an anxious brow, a faded green silk bonnet lined with pink, a white stuff dress with lilac spots, and kid shoes. Monsieur de Sérizy discerned in her the wife of the poor gentleman; some Puritanical soul subscribing to the Courrier Français, glowing with virtue, but very well aware of the advantages of a fixed place, and coveting it.

“A pension of six hundred francs, you said?” replied the Count, answering himself rather than Madame de Reybert’s communication.

“Yes, Monsieur le Comte.”

“You were a de Corroy?”

“Yes, monsieur, of a noble family of the Messin country, my husband’s country.”

“And in what regiment was Monsieur de Reybert?”

“In the 7th Artillery.”

“Good!” said the Count, writing down the number.

He thought he might very well place the management of the estate in the hands of a retired officer, concerning whom he could get the fullest information at the War Office.

“Madame,” he went on, ringing for his valet, “return to Presles with my notary, who is to arrange to dine there tonight, and to whom I have written a line of introduction; this is his address. I am going to Presles myself, but secretly, and will let Monsieur de Reybert know where to call on me.”

So it was not a false alarm that had startled Pierrotin with the news of Monsieur de Sérizy’s journey in a public chaise, and the warning to keep his name a secret; he foresaw imminent danger about to fall on one of his best customers.

On coming out of the café, Pierrotin perceived, at the gate of the Silver Lion, the woman and youth whom his acumen had recognized as travelers; for the lady, with outstretched neck and an anxious face, was evidently looking for him. This lady, in a re-dyed black silk, a gray bonnet, and an old French cashmere shawl, shod in openwork silk stockings and kid shoes, held a flat straw basket and a bright blue umbrella. She had once been handsome, and now looked about forty; and her blue eyes, bereft of the sparkle that happiness might have given them, showed that she had long since renounced the world. Her dress no less than her person betrayed a mother entirely given up to her housekeeping and her son. If the bonnet-strings were shabby, the shape of it dated from three years back. Her shawl was fastened with a large broken needle, converted into a pin by means of a head of sealing-wax.

This person was impatiently awaiting Pierrotin to commend her son to his care; the lad was probably traveling alone for the first time, and she had accompanied him as far as the coach office, as much out of mistrust as out of motherly devotion. The son was in a way supplementary to his mother; and without the mother the son would have seemed less comprehensible. While the mother was content to display darned gloves, the son wore an olive-green overcoat, with sleeves rather short at the wrists, showing that he was still growing, as lads do between eighteen and nineteen. And his blue trousers, mended by the mother, showed that they had been new-seated whenever the tails of his coat parted maliciously behind.

“Do not twist your gloves up in that way,” she was saying when Pierrotin appeared, “you wear them shabby.⁠—Are you the driver?⁠—Ah! it is you, Pierrotin!” she went on, leaving her son for a moment and taking the coachman aside.

“All well, Madame Clapart?” said Pierrotin, with an expression on his face of mingled respect and familiarity.

“Yes, Pierrotin. Take good care of my Oscar; he is traveling alone for the first time.”

“Oh! if he is going alone to Monsieur Moreau’s⁠—?” said Pierrotin, to discover whether it were really there that the fellow was being sent.

“Yes,” said the mother.

“Has Madame Moreau a liking for him, then?” said the man, with a knowing look.

“Oh! it will not be all roses for the poor boy; but his future prospects make it absolutely necessary that he should go.”

Pierrotin was struck by this remark, and he did not like to confide his doubts concerning the steward to Madame Clapart; while she, on her part, dared not offend her son by giving Pierrotin such instructions as would put the coachman in the position of a mentor.

During this brief hesitation on both sides, under cover of a few remarks on the weather, the roads, the stopping places on the way, it will not be superfluous to explain the circumstances which had thrown Pierrotin and Madame Clapart together and given rise to their few words of confidential talk. Frequently⁠—that is to say, three or four times a month⁠—Pierrotin, on his way to Paris, found the steward waiting at la Cave, and as the coach came up he beckoned to a gardener, who then helped Pierrotin to place on the coach one or two baskets full of such fruit and vegetables as were in season, with fowls, eggs, butter, or game. Moreau always paid the carriage himself, and gave him money enough to pay the excise duties at the barrier, if the baskets contained anything subject to the octroi. These hampers and baskets never bore any label. The first time, and once for all, the steward had given the shrewd driver Madame Clapart’s address by word of mouth, desiring him never to trust anybody else with these precious parcels. Pierrotin, dreaming of an intrigue between some pretty girl and the agent, had gone as directed to No. 7 Rue de la Cerisaie, near the Arsenal, where he had seen the Madame Clapart above described, instead of the fair young creature he had expected to find.

Carriers, in the course of their day’s work, are initiated into many homes and trusted with many secrets; but the chances of the social system⁠—a sort of deputy providence⁠—having ordained that they should have no education or be unendowed with the gift of observation, it follows that they are not dangerous. Nevertheless, after many months Pierrotin could not account to himself for the friendship between Madame Clapart and Monsieur Moreau, from what little he saw of the household in the Rue de la Cerisaie. Though rents were not at that time high in the neighborhood of the Arsenal, Madame Clapart lived on the third floor on the inner side of a courtyard, in a house which had been in its day the residence of some magnate, at a period when the highest nobility in the kingdom lived on what had been the site of the Palais des Tournelles and the Hôtel Saint-Paul. Towards the close of the sixteenth century the great families spread themselves over vast plots previously occupied by the King’s Palace Gardens, of which the record survives in the names of the streets, Rue de la Cerisaie, Rue Beautreillis, Rue des Lions, and so on. This apartment, of which every room was paneled with old wainscot, consisted of three rooms in a row⁠—a dining-room, a drawing-room, and a bedroom. Above were the kitchen and Oscar’s room. Fronting the door that opened on to the landing was the door of another room at an angle to these, in a sort of square tower of massive stone built out all the way up, and containing besides a wooden staircase. This tower room was where Moreau slept whenever he spent a night in Paris.

Pierrotin deposited the baskets in the first room, where he could see six straw-bottomed, walnut-wood chairs, a table, and a sideboard; narrow russet-brown curtains screened the windows. Afterwards, when he was admitted to the drawing-room, he found it fitted with old furniture of the time of the Empire, much worn; and there was no more of it at all than the landlord would insist upon as a guarantee for the rent. The carved panels, painted coarsely in distemper of a dull pinkish white, and in such a way as to fill up the mouldings and thicken the scrolls and figures, far from being ornamental, were positively depressing. The floor, which was never waxed, was as dingy as the boards of a schoolroom. If the carrier by chance disturbed Monsieur and Madame Clapart at a meal, the plates, the glasses, the most trifling things revealed miserable poverty; they had silver plate, it is true, but the dishes and tureen, chipped and riveted like those of the very poor, were truly pitiable. Monsieur Clapart, in a dirty short coat, with squalid slippers on his feet, and always green spectacles to protect his eyes, as he took off a horrible peaked cap, five years old at least, showed a high-pointed skull, with a few dirty locks hanging about it, which a poet would have declined to call hair. This colorless creature looked a coward, and was probably a tyrant.

In this dismal apartment, facing north, with no outlook but on a vine nailed out on the opposite wall, and a well in the corner of the yard, Madame Clapart gave herself the airs of a queen, and trod like a woman who could not go out on foot. Often, as she thanked Pierrotin, she would give him a look that might have touched the heart of a looker-on; now and again she would slip a twelve-sou piece into his hand. Her voice in speech was very sweet. Oscar was unknown to Pierrotin, for the boy had but just left school, and he had never seen him at home.

This was the sad story which Pierrotin never could have guessed, not even after questioning the gatekeeper’s wife, as he sometimes did⁠—for the woman knew nothing beyond the fact that the Claparts’ rent was but two hundred and fifty francs; that they only had a woman in to help for a few hours in the morning; that Madame would sometimes do her own little bit of washing, and paid for every letter as it came as if she were afraid to let the account stand.

There is no such thing⁠—or rather, there is very rarely such a thing⁠—as a criminal who is bad all through. How much more rare it must be to find a man who is dishonest all through! He may make up his accounts to his own advantage rather than his master’s, or pull as much hay as possible to his end of the manger; but even while making a little fortune by illicit means, few men deny themselves the luxury of some good action. If only out of curiosity, as a contrast, or perhaps by chance, every man has known his hour of generosity; he may speak of it as a mistake, and never repeat it; still, once or twice in his life, he will have sacrificed to well-doing, as the veriest lout will sacrifice to the Graces. If Moreau’s sins can be forgiven him, will it not be for the sake of his constancy in helping a poor woman of whose favors he had once been proud, and under whose roof he had found refuge in danger?

This woman, famous at the time of the Directoire for her connection with one of the five kings of the day, married, under his powerful patronage, a contractor, who made millions, and then was ruined by Napoleon in 1802. This man, named Husson, was driven mad by his sudden fall from opulence to poverty; he threw himself into the Seine, leaving his handsome wife expecting a child. Moreau, who was on very intimate terms with Madame Husson, was at the time under sentence of death, so he could not marry the widow, and was in fact obliged to leave France for a time. Madame Husson, only two-and-twenty, in her utter poverty, married an official named Clapart, a young man of twenty-seven⁠—a man of promise, it was said. Heaven preserve women from handsome men of promise! In those days officials rose rapidly from humble beginnings, for the Emperor had an eye for capable men. But Clapart, vulgarly handsome indeed, had no brains. Believing Madame Husson to be very rich, he had affected a great passion; he was simply a burden to her, never able, either then or later, to satisfy the habits she had acquired in her days of opulence. Clapart filled⁠—badly enough⁠—a small place in the Exchequer Office at a salary of not more than eighteen hundred francs a year.

When Moreau came back to be with the Comte de Sérizy and heard of Madame Husson’s desperate plight, he succeeded, before his own marriage, in getting her a place as woman of the bedchamber in attendance on Madame, the Emperor’s mother. But in spite of such powerful patronage, Clapart could never get on; his incapacity was too immediately obvious.

In 1815 the brilliant Aspasia of the Directory, ruined by the Emperor’s overthrow, was left with nothing to live on but the salary of twelve hundred francs attached to a clerkship in the Municipal Offices, which the Comte de Sérizy’s influence secured for Clapart. Moreau, now the only friend of a woman whom he had known as the possessor of millions, obtained for Oscar Husson a half-scholarship held by the Municipality of Paris in the Collège Henri IV, and he sent to the Rue de la Cerisaie, by Pierrotin, all he could decently offer to the impoverished lady.

Oscar was his mother’s one hope, her very life. The only fault to be found with the poor woman was her excessive fondness for this boy⁠—his stepfather’s utter aversion. Oscar was, unluckily, gifted with a depth of silliness which his mother could never suspect, in spite of Clapart’s ironical remarks. This silliness⁠—or, to be accurate, this bumptiousness⁠—disturbed Monsieur Moreau so greatly that he had begged Madame Clapart to send the lad to him for a month that he might judge for himself what line of life he would prove fit for. The steward had some thought of introducing Oscar one day to the Count as his successor.

But, to give God and the Devil their due, it may here be observed as an excuse for Oscar’s preposterous conceit, that he had been born under the roof of the Emperor’s mother; in his earliest years his eyes had been dazzled by Imperial splendor. His impressible imagination had no doubt retained the memory of those magnificent spectacles, and an image of that golden time of festivities, with a dream of seeing them again. The boastfulness common to schoolboys, all possessed by desire to shine at the expense of their fellows, had in him been exaggerated by those memories of his childhood; and at home perhaps his mother was rather too apt to recall with complacency the days when she had been a queen of Paris under the Directory. Oscar, who had just finished his studies, had, no doubt, often been obliged to assert himself as superior to the humiliations which the pupils who pay are always ready to inflict on the “charity boys” when the scholars are not physically strong enough to impress them with their superiority.

This mixture of departed splendor and faded beauty, of affection resigned to poverty, of hope founded on this son, and maternal blindness, with the heroic endurance of suffering, made this mother one of the sublime figures which in Paris deserve the notice of the observer.

Pierrotin, who, of course, could not know how truly Moreau was attached to this woman, and she, on her part, to the man who had protected her in 1797, and was now her only friend, would not mention to her the suspicion that had dawned in his brain as to the danger which threatened Moreau. The manservant’s ominous speech, “We have all enough to do to take care of ourselves,” recurred to his mind with the instinct of obedience to those whom he designated as “first in the ranks.” Also, at this moment Pierrotin felt as many darts stinging his brain as there are five-franc pieces in a thousand francs. A journey of seven leagues seemed, no doubt, quite an undertaking to this poor mother, who in all her fine lady existence had hardly ever been beyond the barrier; for Pierrotin’s replies, “Yes, madame; no, madame⁠—” again and again, plainly showed that the man was only anxious to escape from her too numerous and useless instructions.

“You will put the luggage where it cannot get wet if the weather should change?”

“I have a tarpaulin,” said Pierrotin; “and you see, madame, it is carefully packed away.”

“Oscar, do not stay more than a fortnight, even if you are pressed,” Madame Clapart went on, coming back to her son. “Do what you will, Madame Moreau will never take to you; besides, you must get home by the end of September. We are going to Belleville, you know, to your uncle Cardot’s.”

“Yes, mamma.”

“Above all,” she added in a low tone, “never talk about servants. Always remember that Madame Moreau was a lady’s maid⁠—”

“Yes, mamma.”

Oscar, like all young people whose conceit is touchy, seemed much put out by these admonitions delivered in the gateway of the Silver Lion.

“Well, goodbye, mamma; we shall soon be off, the horse is put in.”

The mother, forgetting that she was in the open street, hugged her Oscar, and taking a nice little roll out of her bag⁠—

“Here,” said she, “you were forgetting your bread and chocolate. Once more, my dear boy, do not eat anything at the inns; you have to pay ten times the value for the smallest morsel.”

Oscar wished his mother further as she stuffed the roll and the chocolate into his pocket.

There were two witnesses to the scene, two young men a few years older than the newly fledged schoolboy, better dressed than he, and come without their mothers, their demeanor, dress, and manner proclaiming the entire independence which is the end of every lad’s desire while still under direct maternal government. To Oscar, at this moment, these two young fellows epitomized the World.

“Mamma! says he,” cried one of the strangers, with a laugh.

The words reached Oscar’s ears, and in an impulse of intense irritation he shouted out:

“Goodbye, mother!”

It must be owned that Madame Clapart spoke rather too loud, and seemed to admit the passersby to bear witness to her affectionate care.

“What on earth ails you, Oscar?” said the poor woman, much hurt. “I do not understand you,” she added severely, fancying she could thus inspire him with respect⁠—a common mistake with women who spoil their children. “Listen, dear Oscar,” she went on, resuming her coaxing gentleness, “you have a propensity for talking to everybody, telling everything you know and everything you don’t know⁠—out of brag and a young man’s foolish self-conceit. I beg you once more to bridle your tongue. You have not seen enough of life, my dearest treasure, to gauge the people you may meet, and there is nothing more dangerous than talking at random in a public conveyance. In a diligence well-bred persons keep silence.”

The two young men, who had, no doubt, walked to the end of the yard and back, now made the sound of their boots heard once more under the gateway; they might have heard this little lecture; and so, to be quit of his mother, Oscar took heroic measures, showing how much self-esteem can stimulate the inventive powers.

“Mamma,” said he, “you are standing in a thorough draught, you will catch cold. Besides, I must take my place.”

The lad had touched some tender chord, for his mother clasped him in her arms as if he were starting on some long voyage, and saw him into the chaise with tears in her eyes.

“Do not forget to give five francs to the servants,” said she. “And write to me at least three times in the course of the fortnight. Behave discreetly, and remember all my instructions. You have enough linen to need none washed. And, above all, remember all Monsieur Moreau’s kindness; listen to him as to a father, and follow his advice.”

As he got into the chaise Oscar displayed a pair of blue stockings as his trousers slipped up, and the new seat to his trousers as his coattails parted. And the smile on the faces of the two young men, who did not fail to see these evidences of honorable poverty, was a fresh blow to Oscar’s self-esteem.

“Oscar’s place is No. 1,” said Madame Clapart to Pierrotin. “Settle yourself into a corner,” she went on, still gazing at her son with tender affection.

Oh! how much Oscar regretted his mother’s beauty, spoilt by misfortune and sorrow, and the poverty and self-sacrifice that hindered her from being nicely dressed. One of the youngsters⁠—the one who wore boots and spurs⁠—nudged the other with his elbow to point out Oscar’s mother, and the other twirled his moustache with an air, as much as to say, “A neat figure!”

“How am I to get rid of my mother?” thought Oscar, looking quite anxious.

“What is the matter?” said Madame Clapart.

Oscar pretended not to hear, the wretch! And perhaps, under the circumstances, Madame Clapart showed want of tact; but an absorbing passion is so selfish!

“Georges, do you like traveling with children?” asked one of the young men of his friend.

“Yes, if they are weaned, and are called Oscar, and have chocolate to eat, my dear Amaury.”

These remarks were exchanged in an undertone, leaving Oscar free to hear or not to hear them. His manner would show the young man what he might venture on with the lad to amuse himself in the course of the journey. Oscar would not hear. He looked round to see whether his mother, who weighed on him like a nightmare, was still waiting; but, indeed, he knew she was too fond of him to have deserted him yet. He not only involuntarily compared his traveling companion’s dress with his own, but he also felt that his mothers costume counted for something as provoking the young men’s mocking smile.

“If only they would go!” thought he.

Alas! Amaury had just said to Georges, as he struck the wheel of the chaise with his cane:

“And you are prepared to trust your future career on board this frail vessel?”

“Needs must!” replied Georges in a fateful tone.

Oscar heaved a sigh as he noted the youth’s hat, cocked cavalierly over one ear to show a fine head of fair hair elaborately curled, while he, by his stepfather’s orders, wore his black hair in a brush above his forehead, cut quite short like a soldier’s. The vain boy’s face was round and chubby, bright with the color of vigorous health; that of “Georges” was long, delicate, and pale. This young man had a broad brow, and his chest filled out a shawl-pattern waistcoat. As Oscar admired his tightly-fitting iron-gray trousers, and his overcoat, sitting closely to the figure, with Brandenburg braiding and oval buttons, he felt as if the romantic stranger, blessed with so many advantages, were making an unfair display of his superiority, just as an ugly woman is offended by the mere sight of a beauty. The ring of his spurred boot-heels, which the young man accentuated rather too much for Oscar’s liking, went to the boy’s heart. In short, Oscar was as uncomfortable in his clothes, homemade perhaps out of his stepfather’s old ones, as the other enviable youth was satisfied in his.

“That fellow must have ten francs at least in his pocket,” thought Oscar.

The stranger happening to turn round, what were Oscar’s feelings when he discerned a gold chain about his neck⁠—with a gold watch, no doubt, at the end of it.

Living in the Rue de la Cerisaie since 1815, taken to and from school on his holidays by his stepfather Clapart, Oscar had never had any standard of comparison but his mother’s poverty-stricken household. Kept very strictly, by Moreau’s advice, he rarely went to the play, and then aspired no higher than to the Ambigu Comique, where little elegance met his gaze, even if the absorbed attention a boy devotes to the stage had allowed him to study the house. His stepfather still wore his watch in a fob in the fashion of the Empire, with a heavy gold chain hanging over his stomach, and ending in a bunch of miscellaneous objects⁠—seals, and a watch-key with a flat round top, in which was set a landscape in mosaic. Oscar, who looked on this out-of-date splendor as the ne plus ultra of luxury, was quite bewildered by this revelation of superior and less ponderous elegance. The young man also made an insolent display of a pair of good gloves, and seemed bent on blinding Oscar by his graceful handling of a smart cane with a gold knob.

Oscar had just reached the final stage of boyhood in which trifles are the cause of great joys and great anguish, when a real misfortune seems preferable to a ridiculous costume; and vanity, having no great interests in life to absorb it, centres in frivolities, and dress, and the anxiety to be thought a man. The youth magnifies himself, and his self-assertion is all the more marked because it turns on trifles; still, though he envies a well-dressed noodle, he can be also fired with enthusiasm for talent, and admire a man of genius. His faults, when they are not rooted in his heart, only show the exuberance of vitality and a lavish imagination. When a boy of nineteen, an only son, austerely brought up at home as a result of the poverty that weighs so cruelly on a clerk with twelve hundred francs’ salary, but worshiped by a mother, who for his sake endures the bitterest privations⁠—when such a boy is dazzled by a youth of two-and-twenty, envies him his frogged coat lined with silk, his sham cashmere waistcoat, and a tie slipped through a vulgar ring, is not this a mere peccadillo such as may be seen in every class of life in the inferior who envies his betters?

Even a man of genius yields to this primitive passion. Did not Rousseau of Geneva envy Venture and Bacle?

But Oscar went on from the peccadillo to the real fault; he felt humiliated; he owed his traveling companion a grudge; and a secret desire surged up in his heart to show him that he was as good a man as he.

The two young bucks walked to and fro, from the gateway to the stables and back, going out to the street; and as they turned on their heel, they each time looked at Oscar ensconced in his corner. Oscar, convinced that whenever they laughed it was at him, affected profound indifference. He began to hum the tune of a song then in fashion among the Liberals, “C’est la faute à Voltaire, c’est la faute à Rousseau.” (It is all the fault of Voltaire and Rousseau.) This assumption, no doubt, made them take him for some underling lawyer’s clerk.

“Why, perhaps he sings in the chorus at the Opera!” said Amaury.

Exasperated this time, Oscar bounded in his seat; raising the back curtain, he said to Pierrotin:

“When are we to be off?”

“Directly,” said the man, who had his whip in his hand, but his eyes fixed on the Rue d’Enghien.

The scene was now enlivened by the arrival of a young man escorted by a perfect pickle of a boy, who appeared with a porter at their heels hauling a barrow by a strap. The young man spoke confidentially to Pierrotin, who wagged his head and hailed his stableman. The man hurried up to help unload the barrow, which contained, besides two trunks, pails, brushes, and boxes of strange shape, a mass of packets and utensils, which the younger of the two newcomers who had climbed to the box-seat stowed and packed away with such expedition that Oscar, smiling at his mother, who was now watching him from the other side of the street, failed to see any of the paraphernalia which might have explained to him in what profession his traveling companions were employed. This boy, about sixteen years of age, wore a holland blouse with a patent leather belt; his cap, knowingly stuck on one side, proclaimed him a merry youth, as did the picturesque disorder of his curly brown hair tumbling about his shoulders. A black silk tie marked a black line on a very white neck, and seemed to heighten the brightness of bis gray eyes. The restless vivacity of a sunburnt, rosy face, the shape of his full lips, his prominent ears, and his turn-up nose⁠—every feature of his face showed the bantering wit of a Figaro and the recklessness of youth, while the quickness of his gestures and saucy glances revealed a keen intelligence, early developed by the practice of a profession taken up in boyhood. This boy, whom art or nature had already made a man, seemed indifferent to the question of dress, as though he were conscious of some intrinsic moral worth; for he looked at his unpolished boots as if he thought them rather a joke, and at his plain drill trousers to note the stains on them, but rather to study the effect than to hide them.

“I have acquired a fine tone!” said he, giving himself a shake, and addressing his companion.

The expression of the senior showed some authority over this youngster, in whom experienced eyes would at once have discerned the jolly art student, known in French studio slang as a rapin.

“Behave, Mistigris!” replied the master, calling him no doubt by a nickname bestowed on him in the studio.

The elder traveler was a slight and pallid young fellow, with immensely thick black hair in quite fantastic disorder; but this abundant hair seemed naturally necessary to a very large head with a powerful forehead that spoke of precocious intelligence. His curiously puckered face, too peculiar to be called ugly, was as hollow as though this singular young man were suffering either from some chronic malady or from the privations of extreme poverty⁠—which is indeed a terrible chronic malady⁠—or from sorrows too recent to have been forgotten.

His clothes, almost in keeping with those of Mistigris in proportion to his age and dignity, consisted of a much worn coat of a dull green color, shabby, but quite clean and well brushed, a black waistcoat buttoned to the neck, as the coat was too, only just showing a red handkerchief round his throat. Black trousers, as shabby as the coat, hung loosely round his lean legs. His boots were muddy, showing that he had come far, and on foot. With one swift glance the artist took in the depths of the hostelry of the Silver Lion, the stables, the tones of color, and every detail, and he looked at Mistigris, who had imitated him, with an ironical twinkle.

“Rather nice!” said Mistigris.

“Yes, very nice,” replied the other.

“We are still too early,” said Mistigris. “Couldn’t we snatch a toothful? My stomach, like nature, abhors a vacuum!”

“Have we time to get a cup of coffee?” said the artist, in a pleasant voice, to Pierrotin.

“Well, don’t be long,” said Pierrotin.

“We have a quarter of an hour,” added Mistigris, thus revealing the genius for inference, which is characteristic of the Paris art student.

The couple disappeared. Just then nine o’clock struck in the inn kitchen. Georges thought it only fair and reasonable to appeal to Pierrotin.

“I say, my good friend, when you are the proud possessor of such a shandrydan as this,” and he rapped the wheel with his cane, “you should at least make a merit of punctuality. The deuce is in it! we do not ride in that machine for our pleasure, and business must be devilish pressing before we trust our precious selves in it! And that old hack you call Rougeot will certainly not pick up lost time!”

“We will harness on Bichette while those two gentlemen are drinking their coffee,” replied Pierrotin. “Go on, you,” he added to the stableman, “and see if old Léger means to come with us⁠—”

“Where is your old Léger?” asked Georges.

“Just opposite at Number 50; he couldn’t find room in the Beaumont coach,” said Pierrotin to his man, paying no heed to Georges, and going off himself in search of Bichette.

Georges shook hands with his friend and got into the chaise, after tossing in a large portfolio, with an air of much importance; this he placed under the cushion. He took the opposite corner to Oscar.

“This ‘old Léger’ bothers me,’ said he.

“They cannot deprive us of our places,” said Oscar. “Mine is No. 1.”

“And mine No. 2,” replied Georges.

Just as Pierrotin reappeared, leading Bichette, the stableman returned, having in tow a huge man weighing nearly seventeen stone at least.

Old Léger was of the class of farmer who, with an enormous stomach and broad shoulders, wears a powdered queue and a light coat of blue linen. His white gaiters were tightly strapped above the knee over corduroy breeches, and finished off with silver buckles. His hobnailed shoes weighed each a couple of pounds. In his hand he carried a little knotted red switch, very shiny, and with a heavy knob, secured round his wrist by a leather cord.

“And is it you who are known as old Léger?” (Farmer Light), said Georges gravely as the farmer tried to lift his foot to the step of the chaise.

“At your service,” said the farmer, showing him a face rather like that of Louis XVIII, with a fat, red jowl, while above it rose a nose which in any other face would have seemed enormous. His twinkling eyes were deep set in rolls of fat.

“Come, lend a hand, my boy,” said he to Pierrotin.

The farmer was hoisted in by the driver and the stableman to a shout of “Yo, heave ho!” from Georges.

“Oh! I am not going far; I am only going to la Cave!” said Farmer Light, answering a jest with good humor. In France everybody understands a joke.

“Get into the corner,” said Pierrotin. “There will be six of you.”

“And your other horse?” asked Georges. “Is it as fabulous as the third horse of a post-chaise?”

“There it is, master,” said Pierrotin, pointing to the little mare that had come up without calling.

“He calls that insect a horse!” said Georges, astonished.

“Oh, she is a good one to go, is that little mare,” said the farmer, who had taken his seat.⁠—“Morning, gentlemen.⁠—Are we going to weigh anchor, Pierrotin?”

“Two of my travelers are getting a cup of coffee,” said the driver.

The young man with the hollow cheeks and his follower now reappeared.

“Come, let us get off,” was now the universal cry.

“We are off⁠—we are off!” replied Pierrotin. “Let her go,” he added to his man, who kicked away the stones that scotched the wheels.

Pierrotin took hold of Rougeot’s bridle with an encouraging “Tclk, tclk,” to warn the two steeds to pull themselves together; and, torpid as they evidently were, they started the vehicle, which Pierrotin brought to a standstill in front of the gate of the Silver Lion. After this purely preliminary manoeuvre, he again looked down the Rue d’Enghien, and vanished, leaving the conveyance in the care of the stableman.

“Well! Is your governor subject to these attacks?” Mistigris asked of the man.

“He is gone to fetch his oats away from the stable,” replied the Auvergnat, who was up to all the arts in use to pacify the impatience to travelers.

“After all,” said Mistigris, “time is a great plaster.”

At that time there was in the Paris studios a mania for distorting proverbs. It was considered a triumph to hit on some change of letters or some rhyming word which should suggest an absurd meaning, or even make it absolute nonsense.1

“And Paris was not gilt in a play,” replied his comrade.

Pierrotin now returned, accompanied by the Comte de Sérizy, round the corner of the Rue de l’Echiquier; they had no doubt had a short conversation.

“Père Léger, would you mind giving your place up to Monsieur le Comte? It will trim the chaise better.”

“And we shall not be off for an hour yet if you go on like this,” said Georges. “You will have to take out that infernal bar we have had such plaguey trouble to fit in, and everybody will have to get out for the last comer. Each of us has a right to the place he booked. What number is this gentleman’s?⁠—Come, call them over. Have you a waybill? Do you keep a book? Which is Monsieur le Comte’s place?⁠—Count of what?”

“Monsieur le Comte,” said Pierrotin, visibly disturbed, “you will not be comfortable.”

“Can’t you count, man?” said Mistigris. “Short counts make tall friends.”

“Mistigris, behave!” said his master quite seriously.

Monsieur de Sérizy was supposed by his fellow-travelers to be some respectable citizen called Lecomte.

“Do not disturb anybody,” said the Count to Pierrotin; “I will sit in front by you.”

“Now, Mistigris,” said the young artist, “remember the respect due to age. You don’t know how dreadfully old you may live to be. Manners take the van. Give your place up to the gentleman.”

Mistigris opened the apron of the chaise, and jumped out as nimbly as a frog into the water.

“You cannot sit as rabbit, august old man!” said he to Monsieur de Sérizy.

“Mistigris, Tarts are the end of man,” said his master.

“Thank you, monsieur,” said the Count to the artist, by whose side he now took his seat. And the statesman looked with a sagacious eye at the possessors of the back seat, in a way that deeply aggrieved Oscar and Georges.

“We are an hour and a quarter behind time,” remarked Oscar.

“People who want a chaise to themselves should book all the places,” added Georges.

The Comte de Sérizy, quite sure now that he was not recognized, made no reply, but sat with the expression of a good-natured tradesman.

“And if you had been late, you would have liked us to wait for you, I suppose?” said the farmer to the two young fellows.

Pierrotin was looking out towards the Porte Saint-Denis, and paused for a moment before mounting to the hard box-seat, where Mistigris was kicking his heels.

“If you are still waiting for somebody, I am not the last,” remarked the Count.

“That is sound reasoning,” said Mistigris.

Georges and Oscar laughed very rudely.

“The old gentleman is not strikingly original,” said Georges to Oscar, who was enchanted with this apparent alliance.

When Pierrotin had settled himself in his place, he again looked back, but failed to discern in the crowd the two travelers who were wanting to fill up his cargo.

“By the Mass, but a couple more passengers would not come amiss,” said he.

“Look here, I have not paid; I shall get out,” said Georges in alarm.

“Why, whom do you expect, Pierrotin?” said Léger.

Pierrotin cried “Gee!” in a particular tone, which Rougeot and Bichette knew to mean business at last, and they trotted off towards the hill at a brisk pace, which, however, soon grew slack.

The Count had a very red face, quite scarlet indeed, with an inflamed spot here and there, and set off all the more by his perfectly white hair. By any but quite young men this complexion would have been understood as the inflammatory effect on the blood of incessant work. And, indeed, these angry pimples so much disfigured his really noble face, that only close inspection could discern in his greenish eyes all the acumen of the judge, the subtlety of the statesman, and the learning of the legislator. His face was somewhat flat; the nose especially looked as if it had been flattened. His hat hid the breadth and beauty of his brow; and, in fact, there was some justification for the laughter of these heedless lads, in the strange contrast between hair as white as silver and thick, bushy eyebrows still quite black. The Count, who wore a long, blue overcoat, buttoned to the chin in military fashion, had a white handkerchief round his neck, cotton-wool in his ears, and a high shirt collar, showing a square white corner on each cheek. His black trousers covered his boots, of which the tip scarcely showed; he had no ribbon at his buttonhole, and his hands were hidden by his doeskin gloves. Certainly there was nothing in this man which could betray to the lads that he was a peer of France, and one of the most useful men living to his country.

Old Père Léger had never seen the Count, who, on the other hand, knew him only by name. Though the Count, as he got into the chaise, cast about him the inquiring glance which had so much annoyed Oscar and Georges, it was because he was looking for his notary’s clerk, intending to impress on him the need for the greatest secrecy in case he should have been compelled to travel, like himself, by Pierrotin’s conveyance. But he was reassured by Oscar’s appearance and by that of the old farmer, and, above all, by the air of aping the military, with his moustache and his style generally, which stamped Georges an adventurer; and he concluded that his note had reached Maître Alexandre Crottat in good time.

“Père Léger,” said Pierrotin as they came to the steep hill in the Faubourg Saint-Denis, at the Rue de la Fidélité, “suppose we were to walk a bit, heh?” On hearing the name, the Count observed:

“I will go out too; we must ease the horses.”

“Oh! If you go on at this rate, we shall do fourteen leagues in a fortnight!” exclaimed Georges.

“Well, is it any fault of mine,” said Pierrotin, “if a passenger wishes to get out?”

“I will give you ten louis if you keep my secret as I bid you,” said the Count, taking Pierrotin by the arm.

“Oh, ho! My thousand francs!” thought Pierrotin, after giving Monsieur de Sérizy a wink, conveying, “Trust me!”

Oscar and Georges remained in the chaise.

“Look here, Pierrotin⁠—since Pierrotin you are,” cried Georges, when the travelers had got into the chaise again at the top of the hill, “if you are going no faster than this, say so. I will pay my fare to Saint-Denis, and hire a nag there, for I have important business on hand, which will suffer from delay.”

“Oh! he will get on, never fear,” replied the farmer. “And the road is not a wide one.”

“I am never more than half an hour late,” answered Pierrotin.

“Well, well, you are not carting the Pope, I suppose,” said Georges, “so hurry up a little.”

“You ought not to show any favor,” said Mistigris; “and if you are afraid of jolting this gentleman”⁠—and he indicated the Count⁠—“that is not fair.”

“All men are equal in the eye of the Coucou,” said Georges, “as all Frenchmen are in the eye of the Charter.”

“Be quite easy,” said old Léger, “we shall be at la Chapelle yet before noon.” La Chapelle is a village close to the Barrière Saint-Denis.

Those who have traveled know that persons thrown together in a public conveyance do not immediately amalgamate; unless under exceptional circumstances, they do not converse till they are well on their way. This silent interval is spent partly in reciprocal examination, and partly in finding each his own place and taking possession of it. The soul, as much as the body, needs to find its balance. When each severally supposes that he has made an accurate guess at his companion’s age, profession, and temper, the most talkative first opens a conversation, which is taken up all the more eagerly, because all feel the need for cheering the way and dispelling the dullness.

This at least, is what happens in a French coach. In other countries manners are different. The English pride themselves on never opening their lips; a German is dull in a coach; Italians are too cautious to chat; the Spaniards have almost ceased to have any coaches; and the Russians have no roads. So it is only in the ponderous French diligence that the passengers amuse each other, in the gay and gossiping nation where each one is eager to laugh and display his humor, where everything is enlivened by raillery, from the misery of the poorest to the solid interests of the upper middle-class. The police do little to check the license of speech, and the gallery of the Chambers has made discussion fashionable.

When a youngster of two-and-twenty, like the young gentleman who was known so far by the name of Georges, has a ready wit, he is strongly tempted, especially in such circumstances as these, to be reckless in the use of it. In the first place, Georges was not slow to come to the conclusion that he was the superior man of the party. He decided that the Count was a manufacturer of the second class, setting him down as a cutler; the shabby looking youth attended by Mistigris he thought but a greenhorn, Oscar a perfect simpleton, and the farmer a capital butt for a practical joke. Having thus taken the measure of all his traveling companions, he determined to amuse himself at their expense.

“Now,” thought he, as the coucou rolled down the hill from la Chapelle towards the plain of Saint-Denis, “shall I pass myself off as Étienne, or as Béranger?⁠—No, these bumpkins have never heard of either.⁠—A Carbonaro? The Devil! I might be nabbed.⁠—One of Marshal Ney’s sons? Pooh, what could I make of that? Tell them the story of my father’s death? That would hardly be funny.⁠—Suppose I were to have come back from the Government colony in America? They might take me for a spy, and regard me with suspicion.⁠—I will be a Russian Prince in disguise; I will cram them with fine stories about the Emperor Alexander!⁠—Or if I pretended to be Cousin, the Professor of Philosophy? How I could mystify them! No, that limp creature with the towzled hair looks as if he might have kicked his heels at lecture at the Sorbonne.⁠—Oh, why didn’t I think sooner of trotting them out? I can imitate an Englishman so well, I might have been Lord Byron traveling incog.⁠—Hang it! I have missed my chance.⁠—The executioner’s son? Not a bad way of clearing a space at breakfast.⁠—Oh! I know! I will have been in command of the troops under Ali, the Pasha of Janina.”

While he was lost in these meditations, the chaise was making its way through the clouds of dust which constantly blow up from the side paths of this much-trodden road.

“What a dust!” said Mistigris.

“King Henri is dead,” retorted his comrade. “If you said it smelt of vanilla now, you would hit on a new idea!”

“You think that funny,” said Mistigris. “Well, but it does now and then remind me of vanilla.”

“In the East⁠—” Georges began, meaning to concoct a story.

“In the least⁠—” said Mistigris’ master, taking up Georges.

“In the East, I said, from whence I have just returned,” Georges repeated, “the dust smells very sweet. But here it smells of nothing unless it is wafted up from such a manure-heap as this.”

“You have just returned from the East?” said Mistigris, with a sly twinkle.

“And, you see, Mistigwis, the gentleman is so tired that what he now wequires is west,” drawled his master.

“You are not much sunburnt,” said Mistigris.

“Oh! I am but just out of bed after three months’ illness, caused, the doctors say, by an attack of suppressed plague.”

“You have had the plague?” cried the Count, with a look of horror.⁠—“Pierrotin, put me out.”

“Get on, Pierrotin,” said Mistigris.⁠—“You hear that the plague was suppressed,” he went on, addressing Monsieur de Sérizy. “It was the sort of plague that goes down in the course of conversation.”

“The plague of which one merely says, ‘Plague take it!’ ” cried the artist.

“Or plague take the man!” added Mistigris.

“Mistigris,” said his master, “I shall put you out to walk if you get into mischief.⁠—So you have been in the East, monsieur?” he went on, turning to Georges.

“Yes, monsieur. First in Egypt and then in Greece, where I served under Ali Pasha of Janina, with whom I had a desperate row.⁠—The climate is too much for most men; and the excitements of all kinds that are part of an Oriental life wrecked my liver.”

“Oh, ho! a soldier?” said the burly farmer. “Why, how old are you?”

“I am nine-and-twenty,” said Georges, and all his fellow-travelers looked at him. “At eighteen I served as a private in the famous campaign of 1813; but I only was present at the battle of Hanau, where I won the rank of sergeant-major. In France, at Montereau, I was made sublieutenant, and I was decorated by⁠—no spies here?⁠—by the Emperor.”

“And you do not wear the Cross of your Order?” said Oscar.

“A Cross given by the present set? Thank you for nothing. Besides, who that is anybody wears his decorations when traveling? Look at monsieur,” he went on, indicating the Comte de Sérizy, “I will bet you anything you please⁠—”

“Betting anything you please is the same thing in France as not betting at all,” said Mistigris’ master.

“I will bet you anything you please,” Georges repeated pompously, “that he is covered with stars.”

“I have, in fact,” said Monsieur de Sérizy, with a laugh, “the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the Grand Cross of Saint-Andrew of Russia, of the Eagle of Prussia, of the Order of the Annunciada of Sardinia, and of the Golden Fleece.”

“Is that all?” said Mistigris. “And it all rides in a public chaise?”

“He is going it, is the brick-red man!” said Georges in a whisper to Oscar. “What did I tell you?” he remarked aloud.⁠—“I make no secret of it, I am devoted to the Emperor!”

“I served under him,” said the Count.

“And what a man! Wasn’t he?” cried Georges.

“A man to whom I am under great obligations,” replied the Count, with a well-affected air of stupidity.

“For your crosses?” said Mistigris.

“And what quantities of snuff he took!” replied Monsieur de Sérizy.

“Yes, he took it loose in his waistcoat pockets.”

“So I have been told,” said the farmer, with a look of incredulity.

“And not only that, but he chewed and smoked,” Georges went on. “I saw him smoking in the oddest way at Waterloo when Marshal Soult lifted him up bodily and flung him into his traveling carriage, just as he had seized a musket and wanted to charge the English!”

“So you were at Waterloo?” said Oscar, opening his eyes very wide.

“Yes, young man, I went through the campaign of 1815. At Mont Saint-Jean I was made captain, and I retired on the Loire when we were disbanded. But, on my honor, I was sick of France, and I could not stay. No, I should have got myself into some scrape. So I went off with two or three others of the same sort, Selves, Besson, and some more, who are in Egypt to this day in the service of Mohammed Pasha, and a queer fellow he is, I can tell you! He was a tobacconist at la Cavalle, and is on the high way to be a reigning prince. You have seen him in Horace Vernet’s picture of the Massacre of the Mamelukes. Such a handsome man!⁠—I never would abjure the faith of my fathers and adopt Islam; all the more because the ceremony involves a surgical operation for which I had no liking. Besides, no one respects a renegade. If they had offered me a hundred thousand francs a year, then, indeed⁠—and yet, no.⁠—The Pasha made me a present of a thousand talari.”

“How much is that?” asked Oscar, who was all ears.

“Oh, no great matter. The talaro is much the same as a five-franc piece. And, on my honor, I did not earn enough to pay for the vices I learned in that thundering vile country⁠—if you can call it a country. I cannot live now without smoking my narghileh twice a day, and it is very expensive⁠—”

“And what is Egypt like?” asked Monsieur de Sérizy.

“Egypt is all sand,” replied Georges, quite undaunted. “There is nothing green but the Nile valley. Draw a green strip on a sheet of yellow paper, and there you have Egypt.⁠—The Egyptians, the fellaheen, have, I may remark, one great advantage over us; there are no gendarmes. You may go from one end of Egypt to the other, and you will not find one.”

“I suppose there are a good many Egyptians there,” said Mistigris.

“Not so many as you would think,” answered Georges. “There are more Abyssinians, Giaours, Vechabites, Bedouins, and Copts.⁠—However, all these creatures are so very far from amusing that I was only too glad to embark on a Genoese polacra, bound for the Ionian Islands to take up powder and ammunition for Ali of Tebelen. As you know, the English sell powder and ammunition to all nations, to the Turks and the Greeks; they would sell them to the Devil if the Devil had money. So from Zante we were to luff up to the coast of Greece.

“And, I tell you, take me as you see me, the name of Georges is famous in those parts. I am the grandson of that famous Czerni-Georges who made war on the Porte; but instead of breaking it down, he was unluckily smashed up. His son took refuge in the house of the French Consul at Smyrna, and came to Paris in 1792, where he died before I, his seventh child, was born. Our treasure was stolen from us by a friend of my grandfather’s, so we were ruined. My mother lived by selling her diamonds one by one, till in 1799 she married Monsieur Yung, a contractor, and my stepfather. But my mother died; I quarreled with my stepfather, who, between ourselves, is a rascal; he is still living, but we never meet. The wretch left us all seven to our fate without a word, nor bit nor sup. And that is how, in 1813, in sheer despair, I went off as a conscript.⁠—You cannot imagine with what joy Ali of Tebelen hailed the grandson of Czerni-Georges. Here I call myself simply Georges.⁠—The Pasha gave me a seraglio⁠—”

“You had a seraglio?” said Oscar.

“Were you a Pasha with many tails?” asked Mistigris.

“How is it that you don’t know that there is but one Sultan who can create pashas?” said Georges, “and my friend Tebelen⁠—for we were friends, like two Bourbons⁠—was a rebel against the Padishah.⁠—You know⁠—or you don’t know⁠—that the Grand Signor’s correct title is Padishah, and not the Grand Turk or the Sultan.

“Do not suppose that a seraglio is any great matter. You might just as well have a flock of goats. Their women are great fools, and I like the grisettes of the Chaumière at Mont Parnasse a thousand times better.”

“And they are much nearer,” said the Comte de Sérizy.

“These women of the seraglio never know a word of French, and language is indispensable to an understanding. Ali gave me five lawful wives and ten slave girls. At Janina that was a mere nothing. In the East, you see, it is very bad style to have wives; you have them, but as we here have our Voltaire and our Rousseau; who ever looks into his Voltaire or his Rousseau? Nobody.⁠—And yet it is quite the right thing to be jealous. You may tie a woman up in a sack and throw her into the water on a mere suspicion by an article of their Code.”

“Did you throw any in?”

“I? What! a Frenchman! I was devoted to them.”

Whereupon Georges twirled up his moustache, and assumed a pensive air.

By this time they were at Saint-Denis, and Pierrotin drew up at the door of the inn where the famous cheesecakes are sold, and where all travelers call. The Count, really puzzled by the mixture of truth and nonsense in Georges’ rhodomontade, jumped into the carriage again, looked under the cushion for the portfolio which Pierrotin had told him that this mysterious youth had bestowed there, and saw on it in gilt letters the words, “Maître Crottat, Notaire.” The Count at once took the liberty of opening the case, fearing, with good reason, that if he did not, farmer Léger might be possessed with similar curiosity; and taking out the deed relating to the Moulineaux farm, he folded it up, put it in the side pocket of his coat, and came back to join his fellow-travelers.

“This Georges is neither more nor less than Crottat’s junior clerk. I will congratulate his master, who ought to have sent his head-clerk.”

From the respectful attention of the farmer and Oscar, Georges perceived that in them at least he had two ardent admirers. Of course, he put on lordly airs; he treated them to cheesecakes and a glass of Alicante, and then did the same to Mistigris and his master, asking them their names on the strength of this munificence.

“Oh, monsieur,” said the elder, “I am not the proud owner of so illustrious a name as yours, and I have not come home from Asia.” The Count, who had made haste to get back to the vast inn kitchen, so as to excite no suspicions, came in time to hear the end of the reply.⁠—“I am simply a poor painter just returned from Rome, where I went at the expense of the Government after winning the Grand Prix five years ago. My name is Schinner.”

“Hallo, master, may I offer you a glass of Alicante and some cheesecakes?” cried Georges to the Count.

“Thank you, no,” said the Count. “I never come out till I have had my cup of coffee.”

“And you never eat anything between meals? How Marais, Place Royale, and Ille Saint-Louis!” exclaimed Georges. “When he crammed us just now about his Orders, I fancied him better fun than he is,” he went on in a low voice to the painter; “but we will get him on to that subject again⁠—the little tallow-chandler.⁠—Come, boy,” said he to Oscar, “drink the glass that was poured out for the grocer, it will make your moustache grow.”

Oscar, anxious to play the man, drank the second glass of wine, and ate three more cheesecakes.

“Very good wine it is!” said old Léger, smacking his tongue.

“And all the better,” remarked Georges, “because it comes from Bercy. I have been to Alicante, and, I tell you, this is no more like the wine of that country than my arm is like a windmill. Our manufactured wines are far better than the natural products.⁠—Come, Pierrotin, have a glass. What a pity it is that your horses cannot each drink one; we should get on faster!”

“Oh, that is unnecessary, as I have a gray horse already,” said Pierrotin (gris, which means gray, meaning also screwed).

Oscar, as he heard the vulgar pun, thought Pierrotin a marvel of wit.

“Off!” cried Pierrotin, cracking his whip as soon as the passengers had once more packed themselves into the vehicle.

It was by this time eleven o’clock. The weather, which had been rather dull, now cleared; the wind swept away the clouds; the blue sky shone out here and there; and by the time Pierrotin’s chaise was fairly started on the ribbon of road between Saint-Denis and Pierrefitte, the sun had finally drunk up the last filmy haze that hung like a diaphanous veil over the views from this famous suburb.

“Well, and why did you throw over your friend the Pasha?” said the farmer to Georges.

“He was a very queer customer,” replied Georges, with an air of hiding many mysteries. “Only think, he put me in command of his cavalry! Very well⁠—”

“That,” thought poor Oscar, “is why he wears spurs.”

“At that time, Ali of Tebelen wanted to rid himself of Chosrew Pasha, another queer fish.⁠—Chaureff you call him here, but in Turkey they call him Cosserev. You must have read in the papers at the time that old Ali had beaten Chosrew, and pretty soundly too. Well, but for me, Ali would have been done for some days sooner. I led the right wing, and I saw Chosrew, the old sneak, just charging the centre⁠—oh, yes, I can tell you, as straight and steady a move as if he had been Murat.⁠—Good! I took my time, and I charged at full speed, cutting Chosrew’s column in two parts, for he had pushed through our centre, and had no cover. You understand⁠—

“After it was all over Ali fairly hugged me.”

“Is that the custom in the East?” said the Comte de Sérizy, with a touch of irony.

“Yes, monsieur, as it is everywhere,” answered the painter.

“We drove Chosrew back over thirty leagues of country⁠—like a hunt, I tell you,” Georges went on. “Splendid horsemen are the Turks. Ali gave me yataghans, guns, and swords.⁠—‘Take as many as you like.’⁠—When we got back to the capital, that incredible creature made proposals to me that did not suit my views at all. He wanted to adopt me as his favorite, his heir. But I had had enough of the life; for, after all, Ali of Tebelen was a rebel against the Porte, and I thought it wiser to clear out. But I must do Monsieur de Tebelen justice, he loaded me with presents; diamonds, ten thousand talari, a thousand pieces of gold, a fair Greek girl for a page, a little Arnaute maid for company, and an Arab horse. Well, there! Ali, the Pasha of Janina, is an unappreciated man; he lacks a historian.⁠—Nowhere but in the East do you meet with these iron souls who, for twenty years, strain every nerve, only to be able to take a revenge one fine morning.

“In the first place, he had the grandest white beard you ever saw, and a hard, stern face⁠—”

“But what became of your treasure?” asked the farmer.

“Ah! there you are! Those people have no State funds nor Bank of France; so I packed my moneybags on board a Greek tartane, which was captured by the Capitan-Pasha himself. Then I myself, as you see me, was within an ace of being impaled at Smyrna. Yes, on my honor, but for Monsieur de Rivière, the Ambassador, who happened to be on the spot, I should have been executed as an ally of Ali Pasha’s. I saved my head, or I could not speak so plainly; but as for the ten thousand talari, the thousand pieces of gold, and the weapons, oh! that was all swallowed down by that greedy-guts the Capitan-Pasha. My position was all the more ticklish because the Capitan-Pasha was Chosrew himself. After the dressing he had had, the scamp had got this post, which is that of High Admiral in France.”

“But he had been in the cavalry, as I understood?” said old Léger, who had been listening attentively to this long story.

“That shows how little the East is understood in the Department of Seine-et-Oise!” exclaimed Georges. “Monsieur, the Turks are like that.⁠—You are a farmer, the Padishah makes you a Field-Marshal; if you do not fulfil your duties to his satisfaction, so much the worse for you. Off with your head! That is his way of dismissing you. A gardener is made préfet, and a prime minister is a private once more. The Ottomans know no laws of promotion or hierarchy.⁠—Chosrew, who had been a horseman, was now a sailor. The Padishah Mohammed had instructed him to fall on Ali by sea; and he had, in fact, mastered him, but only by the help of the English, who got the best of the booty, the thieves! They laid hands on the treasure.

“This Chosrew, who had not forgotten the riding-lesson I had given him, recognized me at once. As you may suppose, I was settled⁠—oh! done for!⁠—if it had not occurred to me to appeal, as a Frenchman and a Troubadour, to Monsieur de Rivière. The Ambassador, delighted to assert himself, demanded my release. The Turks have this great merit, they are as ready to let you go as to cut off your head; they are indifferent to everything. The French consul, a charming man, and a friend of Chosrew’s, got him to restore two thousand talari, and his name, I may say, is graven on my heart⁠—”

“And his name⁠—?” asked Monsieur de Sérizy.

He could not forbear a look of surprise when Georges, in fact, mentioned the name of one of our most distinguished Consuls-General, who was at Smyrna at the time.

“I was present, as it fell out, at the execution of the Commandant of Smyrna, the Padishah having ordered Chosrew to put him to death⁠—one of the most curious things I ever saw, though I have seen many. I will tell you all about it by and by at breakfast.

“From Smyrna I went to Spain, on hearing there was a revolution there. I went straight to Mina, who took me for an aide-de-camp, and gave me the rank of Colonel. So I fought for the Constitutional party, which is going to the dogs, for we shall walk into Spain one of these days.”

“And you a French officer!” said the Comte de Sérizy severely. “You are trusting very rashly to the discretion of your hearers.”

“There are no spies among them,” said Georges.

“And does it not occur to you, Colonel Georges,” said the Count, “that at this very time a conspiracy is being inquired into by the Chamber of Peers, which makes the Government very strict in its dealings with soldiers who bear arms against France, or who aid in intrigues abroad tending to the overthrow of any legitimate sovereign?”

At this ominous remark, the painter reddened up to his ears, and glanced at Mistigris, who was speechless.

“Well, and what then?” asked old Léger.

“Why, if I by chance were a magistrate, would it not be my duty to call on the gendarmes of the Brigade at Pierrefitte to arrest Mina’s aide-de-camp,” said the Count, “and to summons all who are in this chaise as witnesses?”

This speech silenced Georges all the more effectually because the vehicle was just passing the Gendarmerie Station, where the white flag was, to use a classical phrase, floating on the breeze.

“You have too many Orders to be guilty of such mean conduct,” said Oscar.

“We will play him a trick yet,” whispered Georges to Oscar.

“Colonel,” said Léger, very much discomfited by the Count’s outburst, and anxious to change the subject, “in the countries where you have traveled, what is the farming like? What are their crops in rotation?”

“In the first place, my good friend, you must understand that the people are too busy smoking weeds to burn them on the land⁠—”

The Count could not help smiling, and his smile reassured the narrator.

“And they have a way of cultivating the land which you will think strange. They do not cultivate it all; that is their system. The Turks and Greeks eat onions or rice; they collect opium from their poppies, which yields a large revenue, and tobacco grows almost wild⁠—their famous Latakia. Then there are dates, bunches of sugarplums, that grow without any trouble. It is a country of endless resources and trade. Quantities of carpets are made at Smyrna, and not dear.”

“Ay,” said the farmer, “but if the carpets are made of wool, wool comes from sheep; and to have sheep they must have fields, farms, and farming⁠—”

“There must, no doubt, be something of the kind,” replied Georges. “But rice, in the first place, grows in water; and then I have always been near the coast, and have only seen the country devastated by war. Besides, I have a perfect horror of statistics.”

“And the taxes?” said the farmer.

“Ah! the taxes are heavy. The people are robbed of everything, and allowed to keep the rest. The Pasha of Egypt, struck by the merits of this system, was organizing the Administration on that basis when I left.”

“But how?” said old Léger, who was utterly puzzled.

“How?” echoed Georges. “There are collectors who seize the crops, leaving the peasants just enough to live on. And by that system there is no trouble with papers and red tape, the plague of France.⁠—There you are!”

“But what right have they to do it?” asked the farmer.

“It is the land of despotism, that’s all. Did you never hear Montesquieu’s fine definition of Despotism⁠—‘Like the savage, it cuts the tree down to gather the fruit.’ ”

“And that is what they want to bring us back to!” cried Mistigris. “But a burnt rat dreads the mire.”

“And it is what we shall come to,” exclaimed the Comte de Sérizy. “Those who hold land will be wise to sell it. Monsieur Schinner must have seen how such things are done in Italy.”

“Corpo di Bacco! The Pope is not behind his times. But they are used to it there. The Italians are such good people! So long as they are allowed to do a little highway murdering of travelers, they are quite content.”

“But you, too, do not wear the ribbon of the Legion of Honor that was given you in 1819,” remarked the Count. “Is the fashion universal?”

Mistigris and the false Schinner reddened up to their hair.

“Oh, with me it is different,” replied Schinner. “I do not wish to be recognized. Do not betray me, monsieur. I mean to pass for a quite unimportant painter; in fact, a mere decorator. I am going to a gentleman’s house where I am anxious to excite no suspicion.”

“Oh, ho!” said the Count, “a lady! a love affair!⁠—How happy you are to be young!”

Oscar, who was bursting in his skin with envy at being nobody and having nothing to say, looked from Colonel Czerni-Georges to Schinner the great artist, wondering whether he could not make something of himself. But what could he be, a boy of nineteen, packed off to spend a fortnight or three weeks in the country with the steward of Presles? The Alicante had gone to his head, and his conceit was making the blood boil in his veins. Thus, when the sham Schinner seemed to hint at some romantic adventure of which the joys must be equal to the danger, he gazed at him with eyes flashing with rage and envy.

“Ah!” said the Count, with a look half of envy and half of incredulity, “you must love a woman very much to make such sacrifices for her sake.”

“What sacrifices?” asked Mistigris.

“Don’t you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted by so great a master is covered with gold in payment?” replied the Count. “Why, if the Civil List pays you thirty thousand francs for those of the two rooms in the Louvre,” he went on, turning to Schinner, “you would certainly charge a humble individual, a bourgeois, as you call us in your studios, twenty thousand for a ceiling, while an unknown decorator would hardly get two thousand francs.”

“The money loss is not the worst of it,” replied Mistigris. “You must consider that it will be a masterpiece, and that he must not sign it for fear of compromising her.”

“Ah! I would gladly restore all my orders to the sovereigns of Europe to be loved as a young man must be, to be moved to such devotion!” cried Monsieur de Sérizy.

“Ay, there you are,” said Mistigris. “A man who is young is beloved of many women; and, as the saying goes, there is safety in grumblers.”

“And what does Madame Schinner say to it?” asked the Count, “for you married for love the charming Adélaïde de Rouville, the niece of old Admiral Kergarouët, who got you the work at the Louvre, I believe, through the interest of his nephew the Comte de Fontaine.”

“Is a painter ever a married man when he is traveling?” asked Mistigris.

“That, then, is Studio morality?” exclaimed the Count in an idiotic way.

“Is the morality of the Courts where you got your Orders any better?” said Schinner, who had recovered his presence of mind, which had deserted him for a moment when he heard that the Count was so well informed as to the commission given to the real Schinner.

“I never asked for one,” replied the Count. “I flatter myself that they were all honestly earned.”

“And it becomes you like a pig in dress-boots,” said Mistigris.

Monsieur de Sérizy would not betray himself; he put on an air of stupid good-nature as he looked out over the valley of Groslay, into which they diverged where the roads fork, taking the road to Saint-Brice, and leaving that to Chantilly on their right.

“Ay, take that!” said Oscar between his teeth.

“And is Rome as fine as it is said to be?” Georges asked of the painter.

“Rome is fine only to those who love it; you must have a passion for it to be happy there; but, as a town, I prefer Venice, though I was near being assassinated there.”

“My word! But for me,” said Mistigris, “your goose would have been cooked! It was that rascal Lord Byron who played you that trick. That devil of an Englishman was as mad as a hatter!”

“Hold your tongue,” said Schinner. “I won’t have anything known of my affair with Lord Byron.”

“But you must confess,” said Mistigris, “that you were very glad that I had learned to ‘box’ in our French fashion?”

Now and again Pierrotin and the Count exchanged significant glances, which would have disturbed men a little more worldly-wise than these five fellow-travelers.

“Lords and pashas, and ceilings worth thirty thousand francs! Bless me!” cried the l’Isle-Adam carrier, “I have crowned heads on board today. What handsome tips I shall get!”

“To say nothing of the places being paid for,” said Mistigris slyly.

“It comes in the nick of time,” Pierrotin went on. “For, you know, my fine new coach, Père Léger, for which I paid two thousand francs on account⁠—well, those swindling coach-builders, to whom I am to pay two thousand five hundred francs tomorrow, would not take fifteen hundred francs down and a bill for a thousand at two months.⁠—The vultures insist on it all in ready money. Fancy being as hard as that on a man who has traveled this road for eight years, the father of a family, and putting him in danger of losing everything, money and coach both, for lack of a wretched sum of a thousand francs!⁠—Gee up, Bichette.⁠—They would not dare do it to one of the big companies, I lay a wager.”

“Bless me! No thong, no crupper!” said the student.

“You have only eight hundred francs to seek,” replied the Count, understanding that this speech addressed to the farmer was a sort of bill drawn on himself.

“That’s true,” said Pierrotin. “Come up, Rougeot!”

“You must have seen some fine-painted ceilings at Venice,” said the Count, speaking to Schinner.

“I was too desperately in love to pay any attention to what at the time seemed to me mere trifles,” replied Schinner. “And yet I might have been cured of love-affairs; for in the Venetian States themselves, in Dalmatia, I had just had a sharp lesson.”

“Can you tell the tale?” asked Georges. “I know Dalmatia.”

“Well, then, if you have been there, you know, of course, that up in that corner of the Adriatic they are all old pirates, outlaws, and corsairs retired from business, when they have escaped hanging, all⁠—”

“Uscoques, in short,” said Georges.

On hearing this, the right name, the Count, whom Napoleon had sent into the provinces of Illyria, looked sharply round, so much was he astonished.

“It was in the town where the Maraschino is made,” said Schinner, seeming to try to remember a name.

“Zara,” said Georges. “Yes, I have been there; it is on the coast.”

“You have hit it,” said the painter. “I went there to see the country, for I have a passion for landscape. Twenty times have I made up my mind to try landscape painting, which no one understands, in my opinion, but Mistigris, who will one of these days be a Hobbema, Ruysdael, Claude Lorraine, Poussin, and all the tribe in one.”

“Well,” exclaimed the Count, “if he is but one of them, he will do.”

“If you interrupt so often, we shall never know where we are.”

“Besides, our friend here is not speaking to you,” added Georges to the Count.

“It is not good manners to interrupt,” said Mistigris sententiously. “However, we did the same; and we should all be the losers if we didn’t diversify the conversation by an exchange of reflections. All Frenchmen are equal in a public chaise, as the grandson of Czerni-Georges told us.⁠—So pray go on, delightful old man, more of your bunkum. It is quite the correct thing in the best society; and you know the saying, Do in Turkey as the Turkeys do.”

“I had heard wonders of Dalmatia,” Schinner went on. “So off I went, leaving Mistigris at the inn at Venice.”

“At the locanda,” said Mistigris; “put in the local color.”

“Zara is, as I have been told, a vile hole⁠—”

“Yes,” said Georges; “but it is fortified.”

“I should say so!” replied Schinner, “and the fortifications are an important feature in my story. At Zara there are a great many apothecaries, and I lodged with one of them. In foreign countries the principal business of every native is to let lodgings, his trade is purely accessory.

“In the evening, when I had changed my shirt, I went out on my balcony. Now on the opposite balcony I perceived a woman⁠—oh! But a woman! A Greek; that says everything, the loveliest creature in all the town. Almond eyes, eyelids that came down over them like blinds, and lashes like paintbrushes; an oval face that might have turned Raphael’s brain, a complexion of exquisite hue, melting tones, a skin of velvet⁠—hands⁠—oh!”

“And not moulded in butter like those of David’s school,” said Mistigris.

“You insist on talking like a painter!” cried Georges.

“There, you see! drive nature out with a pitchfork and it comes back in a paintbox,” replied Mistigris.

“And her costume⁠—a genuine Greek costume,” Schinner went on. “As you may suppose, I was in flames. I questioned my Diafoirus, and he informed me that my fair neighbor’s name was Zéna. I changed my shirt. To marry Zéna, her husband, an old villain, had paid her parents three hundred thousand francs, the girl’s beauty was so famous; and she really was the loveliest creature in all Dalmatia, Illyria, and the Adriatic.⁠—In that part of the world you buy your wife, and without having seen her⁠—”

“I will not go there,” said old Léger.

“My sleep, some nights, is illuminated by Zéna’s eyes,” said Schinner. “Her adoring young husband was sixty-seven. Good! But he was as jealous⁠—not as a tiger, for they say a tiger is as jealous as a Dalmatian, and my man was worse than a Dalmatian; he was equal to three Dalmatians and a half. He was an Uscoque, a turkey-cock, a high cockalorum gamecock!”

“In short, the worthy hero of a cock-and-bull story,” said Mistigris.

“Good for you!” replied Georges, laughing.

“After being a corsair, and perhaps a pirate, my man thought no more of spitting a Christian than I do of spitting out of window,” Schinner went on. “A pretty lookout for me. And rich⁠—rolling in millions, the old villain! And as ugly as a pirate may be, for some Pasha had wanted his ears, and he had dropped an eye somewhere on his travels. But my Uscoque made good use of the one he had, and you may take my word for it when I tell you he had eyes all round his head. ‘Never does he let his wife out of his sight,’ said my little Diafoirus.⁠—‘If she should require your services, I would take your place in disguise,’ said I. ‘It is a trick that is very successful in our stage-plays.’⁠—It would take too long to describe the most delightful period of my life, three days, to wit, that I spent at my window ogling Zéna, and putting on a clean shirt every morning. The situation was all the more ticklish and exciting because the least gesture bore some dangerous meaning. Finally, Zéna, no doubt, came to the conclusion that in all the world none but a foreigner, a Frenchman, and an artist would be capable of making eyes at her in the midst of the perils that surrounded him; so, as she execrated her hideous pirate, she responded to my gaze with glances that were enough to lift a man into the vault of Paradise without any need of pulleys. I was screwed up higher and higher! I was tuned to the pitch of Don Quixote. At last I exclaimed, ‘Well, the old wretch may kill me, but here goes!’⁠—Not a landscape did I study; I was studying my corsair’s lair. At night, having put on my most highly scented clean shirt, I crossed the street and I went in⁠—”

“Into the house?” said Oscar.

“Into the house?” said Georges.

“Into the house,” repeated Schinner.

“Well! you are as bold as brass!” cried the farmer. “I wouldn’t have gone, that’s all I can say⁠—”

“With all the more reason that you would have stuck in the door,” replied Schinner. “Well, I went in,” he continued, “and I felt two hands which took hold of mine. I said nothing; for those hands, as smooth as the skin of an onion, impressed silence on me. A whisper in my ear said in Venetian, ‘He is asleep.’ Then, being sure that no one would meet us, Zéna and I went out on the ramparts for an airing, but escorted, if you please, by an old duenna as ugly as sin, who stuck to us like a shadow; and I could not induce Madame la Pirate to dismiss this ridiculous attendant.

“Next evening we did the same; I wanted to send the old woman home; Zéna refused. As my fair one spoke Greek, and I spoke Venetian, we could come to no understanding⁠—we parted in anger. Said I to myself, as I changed my shirt, ‘Next time surely there will be no old woman, and we can make friends again, each in our mother tongue.’⁠—Well, and it was the old woman that saved me, as you shall hear.⁠—It was so fine that, to divert suspicion, I went out to look about me, after we had made it up, of course. After walking round the ramparts, I was coming quietly home with my hands in my pockets when I saw the street packed full of people. Such a crowd!⁠—as if there was an execution. This crowd rushed at me. I was arrested, handcuffed, and led off in charge of the police. No, you cannot imagine, and I hope you may never know, what it is to be supposed to be a murderer by a frenzied mob, throwing stones at you, yelling after you from top to bottom of the high street of a country town, and pursuing you with threats of death! Every eye is a flame of fire, abuse is on every lip, these firebrands of loathing flare up above a hideous cry of ‘Kill him! down with the murderer!’⁠—a sort of bass in the background.”

“So your Dalmatians yelled in French?” said the Count. “You describe the scene as if it had happened yesterday.”

Schinner was for the moment dumbfounded.

“The mob speaks the same language everywhere,” said Mistigris the politician.

“Finally,” Schinner went on again, “when I was in the local Court of Justice and in the presence of the judges of that country, I was informed that the diabolical corsair was dead, poisoned by Zéna.⁠—How I wished I could put on a clean shirt!

“On my soul, I knew nothing about this melodrama. It would seem that the fair Greek was wont to add a little opium⁠—poppies are so plentiful there, as monsieur has told you⁠—to her pirate’s grog to secure a few minutes’ liberty to take a walk, and the night before the poor woman had made a mistake in the dose. It was the damned corsair’s money that made the trouble for my Zéna; but she accounted for everything so simply, that I was released at once on the strength of the old woman’s affidavit, with an order from the Mayor of the town and the Austrian Commissioner of Police to remove myself to Rome. Zéna, who allowed the heirs and the officers of the law to help themselves liberally to the Uscoque’s wealth, was let off, I was told, with two years’ seclusion in a convent, where she still is.⁠—I will go back and paint her portrait, for in a few years everything will be forgotten.⁠—And these are the follies of eighteen!”

“Yes, and you left me without a sou in the locanda at Venice,” said Mistigris. “I made my way from Venice to Rome, to see if I could find you, by daubing portraits at five francs a head, and never got paid; but it was a jolly time! Happiness, they say, does not dwell under gilt hoofs.”

“You may imagine the reflections that choked me with bile in a Dalmatian prison, thrown there without a protector, having to answer to the Dalmatian Austrians, and threatened with the loss of my head for having twice taken a walk with a woman who insisted on being followed by her housekeeper. That is what I call bad luck!” cried Schinner.

“What,” said Oscar guilelessly, “did that happen to you?”

“Why not to this gentleman, since it had already happened during the French occupation of Illyria to one of our most distinguished artillery officers?” said the Count with meaning.

“And did you believe the artillery man?” asked Mistigris slyly.

“And is that all?” asked Oscar.

“Well,” said Mistigris, “he cannot tell you that he had his head cut off. Those who live last live longest.”

“And are there any farms out there?” asked old Léger. “What do they grow there?”

“There is the Maraschino crop,” said Mistigris. “A plant that grows just as high as your lips and yields the liqueur of that name.”

“Ah!” said Léger.

“I was only three days in the town and a fortnight in prison,” replied Schinner. “I saw nothing, not even the fields where they grow the Maraschino.”

“They are making game of you,” said Georges to the farmer. “Maraschino grows in cases.”

Pierrotin’s chaise was now on the way down one of the steep sides of the valley of Saint-Brice, towards the inn in the middle of that large village, where he was to wait an hour to let the horses take breath, eat their oats, and get a drink. It was now about half-past one.

“Hallo! It is farmer Léger!” cried the innkeeper, as the vehicle drew up at his door. “Do you take breakfast?”

“Once every day,” replied the burly customer. “We can eat a snack.”

“Order breakfast for us,” said Georges, carrying his cane as if he were shouldering a musket, in a cavalier style that bewitched Oscar.

Oscar felt a pang of frenzy when he saw this reckless adventurer take a fancy straw cigar-case out of his side pocket, and from it a beautiful tan-colored cigar, which he smoked in the doorway while waiting for the meal.

“Do you smoke?” said Georges to Oscar.

“Sometimes,” said the schoolboy, puffing out his little chest and assuming a dashing style.

Georges held out the open cigar-case to Oscar and to Schinner.

“The devil!” said the great painter. “Ten-sous cigars!”

“The remains of what I brought from Spain,” said the adventurer. “Are you going to have breakfast?”

“No,” said the artist. “They will wait for me at the château. Besides, I had some food before starting.”

“And you,” said Georges to Oscar.

“I have had breakfast,” said Oscar.

Oscar would have given ten years of his life to have boots and trouser-straps. He stood sneezing, and choking, and spitting, and sucking up the smoke with ill-disguised grimaces.

“You don’t know how to smoke,” said Schinner. “Look here,” and Schinner, without moving a muscle, drew in the smoke of his cigar and blew it out through his nose without the slightest effort. Then again he kept the smoke in his throat, took the cigar out of his mouth, and exhaled it gracefully.

“There, young man,” said the painter.

“And this, young man, is another way,” said Georges, imitating Schinner, but swallowing the smoke so that none returned.

“And my parents fancy that I am educated,” thought poor Oscar, trying to smoke with a grace. But he felt so mortally sick that he allowed Mistigris to bone his cigar and to say, as he puffed at it with conspicuous satisfaction:

“I suppose you have nothing catching.”

But Oscar wished he were only strong enough to hit Mistigris.

“Why,” said he, pointing to Colonel Georges, “eight francs for Alicante and cheesecakes, forty sous in cigars, and his breakfast, which will cost⁠—”

“Ten francs at least,” said Mistigris. “But so it is, little dishes make long bills.”

“Well, Père Léger, we can crack a bottle of Bordeaux apiece?” said Georges to the farmer.

“His breakfast will cost him twenty francs,” cried Oscar. “Why, that comes to more than thirty francs!”

Crushed by the sense of his inferiority, Oscar sat down on the cornerstone lost in a reverie, which hindered his observing that his trousers, hitched up as he sat, showed the line of union between an old stocking-leg and a new foot to it, a masterpiece of his mother’s skill.

“Our understandings are twins, if not our souls,” said Mistigris, pulling one leg of his trousers a little way up to show a similar effect. “But a baker’s children are always worst bread.”

The jest made Monsieur de Sérizy smile as he stood with folded arms under the gateway behind the two lads. Heedless as they were, the solemn statesman envied them their faults; he liked their bounce, and admired the quickness of their fun.

“Well, can you get les Moulineaux? for you went to Paris to fetch the money,” said the innkeeper to old Léger, having just shown him a nag for sale in his stables. “It will be a fine joke to screw a bit out of the Comte de Sérizy, a peer of France and a State Minister.”

The wily old courtier betrayed nothing in his face, but he looked round to watch the farmer.

“His goose is cooked!” replied Léger in a low voice.

“So much the better; I love to see your bigwigs done.⁠—And if you want a score or so thousand francs, I will lend you the money. But François, the driver of Touchards’ six o’clock coach, told me as he went through that Monsieur Margueron is invited to dine with the Comte de Sérizy himself today at Presles.”

“That is His Excellency’s plan, but we have our little notions too,” replied the farmer.

“Ah, but the Count will find a place for Monsieur Margueron’s son, and you have no places to give away,” said the innkeeper.

“No, but if the Count has the Ministers on his side, I have King Louis XVIII on mine,” said Léger in the innkeeper’s ear, “and forty thousand of his effigies handed over to Master Moreau will enable me to buy les Moulineaux for two hundred and sixty thousand francs before Monsieur de Sérizy can step in, and he will be glad enough to take it off my hands for three hundred and sixty thousand rather than have the lands valued lot by lot.”

“Not a bad turn, master,” said his friend.

“How is that for a stroke of business?” said the farmer.

“And, after all, the farm lands are worth it to him,” said the innkeeper.

“Les Moulineaux pays six thousand francs a year in kind, and I mean to renew the lease at seven thousand five hundred for eighteen years. So as he invests at more than two and a half percent, Monsieur le Comte won’t be robbed.

“Not to commit Monsieur Moreau, I am to be proposed to the Count by him as a tenant; he will seem to be taking care of his master’s interests by finding him nearly three percent for his money and a farmer who will pay regularly⁠—”

“And what will Moreau get out of the job altogether?”

“Well, if the Count makes him a present of ten thousand francs, he will clear fifty thousand on the transaction; but he will have earned them fairly.”

“And, after all, what does the Count care for Presles? He is so rich,” said the innkeeper. “I have never set eyes on him myself.”

“Nor I neither,” said the farmer. “But he is coming at last to live there; he would not otherwise be laying out two hundred thousand francs on redecorating the rooms. It is as fine as the King’s palace.”

“Well, then,” replied the other, “it is high time that Moreau should feather his nest.”

“Yes, yes; for when once the Master and Mis’ess are on the spot, they will not keep their eyes in their pockets.”

Though the conversation was carried on in a low tone, the Count had kept his ears open.

“Here I have all the evidence I was going in search of,” thought he, looking at the burly farmer as he went back into the kitchen. “But perhaps it is no more than a scheme as yet. Perhaps Moreau has not closed with the offer⁠—!” So averse was he to believe that the land-steward was capable of mixing himself up in such a plot.

Pierrotin now came out to give his horses water. The Count supposed that the driver would breakfast with the innkeeper and Léger, and what he had overheard made him fear the least betrayal.

“The whole posse are in league,” thought he; “it serves them right to thwart their scheming.⁠—Pierrotin,” said he in a low voice as he went up to the driver, “I promised you ten louis to keep my secret; but if you will take care not to let out my name⁠—and I shall know whether you have mentioned it, or given the least clue to it, to any living soul, even at l’Isle-Adam⁠—tomorrow morning, as you pass the château, I will give you the thousand francs to pay for your new coach.⁠—And for greater safety,” added he, slapping Pierrotin’s back, “do without your breakfast; stay outside with your horses.”

Pierrotin had turned pale with joy.

“I understand, Monsieur le Comte, trust me. It is old Père Léger⁠—”

“It concerns every living soul,” replied the Count.

“Be easy.⁠—Come, hurry up,” said Pierrotin, half opening the kitchen door, “we are late already. Listen, Père Léger, there is the hill before us, you know; I am not hungry; I will go on slowly, and you will easily catch me up.⁠—A walk will do you good.”

“The man is in a devil of a hurry!” said the innkeeper. “Won’t you come and join us? The Colonel is standing wine at fifty sous, and a bottle of champagne.”

“No, I can’t. I have a fish on board to be delivered at Stors by three o’clock for a big dinner, and such customers don’t see a joke any more than the fish.”

“All right,” said Léger to the innkeeper; “put the horse you want me to buy in the shafts of your gig, and you can drive us on to pick up Pierrotin. Then we can breakfast in peace, and I shall see what the nag can do. Three of us can very well ride in your trap.”

To the Count’s great satisfaction, Pierrotin himself brought out his horses. Schinner and Mistigris had walked forward.

Pierrotin picked up the two artists halfway between Saint-Brice and Poncelles; and just as he reached the top of the hill, whence they had a view of Écouen, the belfry of le Mesnil, and the woods which encircle that beautiful landscape, the sound of a galloping horse drawing a gig that rattled and jingled announced the pursuit of Père Léger and Mina’s Colonel, who settled themselves into the chaise again.

As Pierrotin zigzagged down the hill into Moisselles, Georges, who had never ceased expatiating to old Léger on the beauty of the innkeeper’s wife at Saint-Brice, exclaimed:

“I say, this is not amiss by way of landscape, Great Painter?”

“It ought not to astonish you, who have seen Spain and the East.”

“And I have two of the Spanish cigars left. If nobody objects, will you finish them off, Schinner? The little man had enough with a mouthful or two.”

Old Léger and the Count kept silence, which was taken for consent.

Oscar, annoyed at being spoken of as “a little man,” retorted while the others were lighting their cigars:

“Though I have not been Mina’s aide-de-camp, monsieur, and have not been in the East, I may go there yet. The career for which my parents intend me will, I hope, relieve me of the necessity of riding in a public chaise when I am as old as you are. When once I am a person of importance, and get a place, I will stay in it⁠—”

“Et cetera punctum!” said Mistigris, imitating the sort of hoarse crow which made Oscar’s speech even more ridiculous; for the poor boy was at the age when the beard begins to grow and the voice to break. “After all,” added Mistigris, “extremes bleat.”

“My word!” said Schinner, “the horses can scarcely drag such a weight of dignity.”

“So your parents intend to start you in a career,” said Georges very seriously. “And what may it be?”

“In diplomacy,” said Oscar.

Three shouts of laughter went forth like three rockets from Mistigris, Schinner, and the old farmer. Even the Count could not help smiling. Georges kept his countenance.

“By Allah! But there is nothing to laugh at,” said the Colonel. “Only, young man,” he went on, addressing Oscar, “it struck me that your respectable mother is not for the moment in a social position wholly beseeming an ambassadress.⁠—She had a most venerable straw bag, and a patch on her shoe.”

“My mother, monsieur!” said Oscar, fuming with indignation. “It was our housekeeper.”

“ ‘Our’ is most aristocratic!” cried the Count, interrupting Oscar.

“The King says our,” replied Oscar haughtily.

A look from Georges checked a general burst of laughter; it conveyed to the painter and to Mistigris the desirability of dealing judiciously with Oscar, so as to make the most of this mine of amusement.

“The gentleman is right,” said the painter to the Count, designating Oscar. “Gentlefolks talk of our house; only second-rate people talk of my house. Everybody has a mania for seeming to have what he has not. For a man loaded with decorations⁠—”

“Then monsieur also is a decorator?” asked Mistigris.

“You know nothing of Court language.⁠—I beg the favor of your protection, your Excellency,” added Schinner, turning to Oscar.

“I must congratulate myself,” said the Count, “on having traveled with three men who are or will be famous⁠—a painter who is already illustrious, a future general, and a young diplomatist who will some day reunite Belgium to France.”

But Oscar, having so basely denied his mother, and furious at perceiving that his companions were making game of him, determined to convince their incredulity at any cost.

“All is not gold that glitters!” said he, flashing lightnings from his eyes.

“You’ve got it wrong,” cried Mistigris. “All is not told that titters. You will not go far in diplomacy if you do not know your proverbs better than that.”

“If I do not know my proverbs, I know my way.”

“It must be leading you a long way,” said Georges, “for your family housekeeper gave you provisions enough for a sea voyage⁠—biscuits, chocolate⁠—”

“A particular roll and some chocolate, yes, monsieur,” returned Oscar. “My stomach is much too delicate to digest the cagmag you get at an inn.”

“ ‘Cagmag’ is as delicate as your digestion,” retorted Georges.

“ ‘Cagmag’ is good!” said the great painter.

“The word is in use in the best circles,” said Mistigris; “I use it myself at the coffeehouse of the Poule Noire.”

“Your tutor was, no doubt, some famous professor⁠—Monsieur Andrieux of the Academy, or Monsieur Royer-Collard?” asked Schinner.

“My tutor was the Abbé Loraux, now the Vicar of St. Sulpice,” replied Oscar, remembering the name of the confessor of the school.

“You did very wisely to have a private tutor,” said Mistigris, “for the fountain⁠—of learning⁠—brought forth a mouse; and you will do something for your Abbé, of course?”

“Certainly; he will be a bishop some day.”

“Through your family interest?” asked Georges quite gravely.

“We may perhaps contribute to his due promotion, for the Abbé Frayssinous often comes to our house.”

“Oh, do you know the Abbé Frayssinous?” asked the Count.

“He is under obligations to my father,” replied Oscar.

“And you are on your way to your estates no doubt?” said Georges.

“No, monsieur; but I have no objection to saying where I am going. I am on my way to the château of Presles, the Comte de Sérizy’s.”

“The devil you are! To Presles?” cried Shinner, turning crimson.

“Then you know Monseigneur the Comte de Sérizy?” asked Georges.

Farmer Léger turned so as to look at Oscar with a bewildered gaze, exclaiming:

“And Monsieur le Comte is at Presles?”

“So it would seem, as I am going there,” replied Oscar.

“Then you have often seen the Count?” asked Monsieur de Sérizy.

“As plainly as I see you. I am great friends with his son, who is about my age, nineteen; and we ride together almost every day.”

“Kings have been known to harry beggar-maids,” said Mistigris sapiently.

A wink from Pierrotin had relieved the farmer’s alarm.

“On my honor,” said the Count to Oscar, “I am delighted to find myself in the company of a young gentleman who can speak with authority of that nobleman. I am anxious to secure his favor in a somewhat important business in which his help will cost him nothing. It is a little claim against the American Government. I should be glad to learn something as to the sort of man he is.”

“Oh, if you hope to succeed,” replied Oscar, with an assumption of competence, “do not apply to him, but to his wife; he is madly in love with her, no one knows that better than I, and his wife cannot endure him.”

“Why,” asked Georges.

“The Count has some skin disease that makes him hideous, and Doctor Alibert has tried in vain to cure it. Monsieur de Sérizy would give half of his immense fortune to have a chest like mine,” said Oscar, opening his shirt and showing a clean pink skin like a child’s. “He lives alone, secluded in his house. You need a good introduction to see him at all. In the first place, he gets up very early in the morning, and works from three till eight, after eight he follows various treatments, sulphur baths or vapor baths. They stew him in a sort of iron tank, for he is always hoping to be cured.”

“If he is so intimate with the King, why is he not ‘touched’ by him?” asked Georges.

“Then the lady keeps her husband in hot water,” said Mistigris.

“The Count has promised thirty thousand francs to a famous Scotch physician who is prescribing for him now,” Oscar went on.

“Then his wife can hardly be blamed for giving herself the best⁠—” Schinner began, but he did not finish his sentence.

“To be sure,” said Oscar. “The poor man is so shriveled up, so decrepit, you would think he was eighty. He is as dry as parchment, and to add to his misfortune, he feels his position⁠—”

“And feels it hot, I should think,” remarked the farmer facetiously.

“Monsieur, he worships his wife, and dares not blame her,” replied Oscar. “He performs the most ridiculous scenes with her, you would die of laughing⁠—exactly like Arnolphe in Molière’s play.”

The Count, in blank dismay, looked at Pierrotin, who seeing him apparently unmoved, concluded that Madame Clapart’s son was inventing a pack of slander.

“So, monsieur, if you wish to succeed,” said Oscar to the Count, “apply to the Marquis d’Aiglemont. If you have madame’s venerable adorer on your side, you will at one stroke secure both the lady and her husband.”

“That is what we call killing two-thirds with one bone,” said Mistigris.

“Dear me!” said the painter, “have you seen the Count undressed? Are you his valet?”

“His valet!” cried Oscar.

“By the Mass! A man does not say such things about his friends in a public conveyance,” added Mistigris. “Discretion, my young friend, is the mother of inattention. I simply don’t hear you.”

“It is certainly a case of tell me whom you know, and I will tell you whom you hate,” exclaimed Schinner.

“But you must learn, Great Painter,” said Georges pompously, “that no man can speak ill of those he does not know. The boy has proved at any rate that he knows his Sérizy by heart. Now, if he had only talked of Madame, it might have been supposed that he was on terms⁠—”

“Not another word about the Comtesse de Sérizy, young men!” cried the Count. “Her brother, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, is a friend of mine, and the man who is so rash as to cast a doubt on the Countess’ honor will answer to me for his speech.”

“Monsieur is right,” said the artist, “there should be no humbug about women.”

“God, Honor, and the Ladies! I saw a melodrama of that name,” said Mistigris.

“Though I do not know Mina, I know the Keeper of the Seals,” said the Count, looking at Georges. “And though I do not display my Orders,” he added, turning to the painter, “I can hinder their being given to those who do not deserve them. In short, I know so many people, that I know Monsieur Grindot, the architect of Presles.⁠—Stop, Pierrotin; I am going to get out.”

Pierrotin drove on to the village of Moisselles, and there, at a little country inn, the travelers alighted. This bit of road was passed in utter silence.

“Where on earth is that little rascal going?” asked the Count, leading Pierrotin into the inn-yard.

“To stay with your steward. He is the son of a poor lady who lives in the Rue de la Cerisaie, and to whom I often carry fruit and game and poultry⁠—a certain Madame Husson.”

“Who is that gentleman?” old Léger asked Pierrotin when the Count had turned away.

“I don’t know,” said Pierrotin. “He never rode with me before; but he may be the Prince who owns the château of Maffliers. He has just told me where to set him down on the road; he is not going so far as l’Isle-Adam.”

“Pierrotin fancies he is the owner of Maffliers,” said the farmer to Georges, getting back into the chaise.

At this stage the three young fellows, looking as silly as pilferers caught in the act, did not dare meet each other’s eye, and seemed lost in reflections on the upshot of their fictions.

“That is what I call a great lie and little wool,” observed Mistigris.

“You see, I know the Count,” said Oscar.

“Possibly, but you will never be an ambassador,” replied Georges. “If you must talk in a public carriage, learn to talk like me and tell nothing.”

“The mother of mischief is no more than a midge’s sting,” said Mistigris, conclusively.

The Count now got into the chaise, and Pierrotin drove on; perfect silence reigned.

“Well, my good friends,” said the Count, as they reached the wood of Carreau, “we are all as mute as if we were going to execution.”

“A man should know that silence is a bold ’un,” said Mistigris with an air.

“It is a fine day,” remarked Georges.

“What place is that?” asked Oscar, pointing to the château of Franconville, which shows so finely on the slope of the great forest of Saint-Martin.

“What!” said the Count, “you who have been so often to Presles, do not know Franconville when you see it?”

“Monsieur knows more of men than of houses,” said Mistigris.

“A sucking diplomatist may sometimes be oblivious,” exclaimed Georges.

“Remember my name!” cried Oscar in a fury, “it is Oscar Husson, and in ten years’ time I shall be famous.”

After this speech, pronounced with great bravado, Oscar huddled himself into his corner.

“Husson de⁠—what?” asked Mistigris.

“A great family,” replied the Count. “The Hussons de la Cerisaie. The gentleman was born at the foot of the Imperial throne.”

Oscar blushed to the roots of his hair in an agony of alarm. They were about to descend the steep hill by la Cave, at the bottom of which, in a narrow valley, on the skirt of the forest of Saint-Martin, stands the splendid château of Presles.

“Gentlemen,” said Monsieur de Sérizy, “I wish you well in your several careers. You, Monsieur le Colonel, make your peace with the King of France; the Czerni-Georges must be on good terms with the Bourbons.⁠—I have no forecast for you, my dear Monsieur Schinner; your fame is already made, and you have won it nobly by splendid work. But you are such a dangerous man that I, who have a wife, should not dare to offer you a commission under my roof.⁠—As to Monsieur Husson, he needs no interest; he is the master of statesmen’s secrets, and can make them tremble.⁠—Monsieur Léger is going to steal a march on the Comte de Sérizy; I only hope that he may hold his own.⁠—Put me down here, Pierrotin, and you can take me up at the same spot tomorrow!” added the Count, who got out, leaving his fellow-travelers quite confounded.

“When you take to your heels you can’t take too much,” remarked Mistigris, seeing how nimbly the traveler vanished in a sunken path.

“Oh, he must be the Count who has taken Franconville; he is going that way,” said Père Léger.

“If ever again I try to humbug in a public carriage I will call myself out,” said the false Schinner. “It is partly your fault too, Mistigris,” said he, giving his boy a rap on his cap.

“Oh, ho! I⁠—who only followed you to Venice,” replied Mistigris. “But play a dog a bad game and slang him.”

“Do you know,” said Georges to Oscar, “that if by any chance that was the Comte de Sérizy, I should be sorry to find myself in your skin, although it is so free from disease.”

Oscar, reminded by these words of his mother’s advice, turned pale, and was quite sobered.

“Here you are, gentlemen,” said Pierrotin, pulling up at a handsome gate.

“What, already?” exclaimed the painter, Georges, and Oscar all in a breath.

“That’s a stiff one!” cried Pierrotin. “Do you mean to say, gentlemen, that neither of you has ever been here before?⁠—There stands the château of Presles!”

“All right,” said Georges, recovering himself. “I am going on to the farm of les Moulineaux,” he added, not choosing to tell his fellow-travelers that he was bound for the house.

“Then you are coming with me,” said Léger.

“How is that?”

“I am the farmer at les Moulineaux. And what do you want of me, Colonel?”

“A taste of your butter,” said Georges, pulling out his portfolio.

“Pierrotin, drop my things at the steward’s,” said Oscar; “I am going straight to the house.” And he plunged into a cross-path without knowing whither it led.

“Hallo! Mr. Ambassador,” cried Pierrotin, “you are going into the forest. If you want to get to the château, go in by the side gate.”

Thus compelled to go in, Oscar made his way into the spacious courtyard with a huge stone-edged flowerbed in the middle, and stone posts all round with chains between. While Père Léger stood watching Oscar, Georges, thunderstruck at hearing the burly farmer describe himself as the owner of les Moulineaux, vanished so nimbly that when the fat man looked round for his Colonel, he could not find him.

At Pierrotin’s request the gate was opened, and he went in with much dignity to deposit the Great Schinner’s multifarious properties at the lodge. Oscar was in dismay at seeing Mistigris and the artist, the witnesses of his brag, really admitted to the château.

In ten minutes Pierrotin had unloaded the chaise of the painter’s paraphernalia, Oscar Husson’s luggage, and the neat leather portmanteau, which he mysteriously confided to the lodge-keeper. Then he turned his machine, cracking his whip energetically, and went on his way to the woods of l’Isle-Adam, his face still wearing the artful expression of a peasant summing up his profits.

Nothing was wanting to his satisfaction. On the morrow he would have his thousand francs.

Oscar, with his tail between his legs, so to speak, wandered round the great court, waiting to see what would become of his traveling companions, when he presently saw Monsieur Moreau come out of the large entrance-hall, known as the guardroom, on to the front steps. The land-steward, who wore a long blue riding-coat down to his heels, had on nankin-colored breeches and hunting-boots, and carried a crop in his hand.

“Well, my boy, so here you are? And how is the dear mother?” said he, shaking hands with Oscar. “Good morning, gentlemen; you, no doubt, are the painters promised us by Monsieur Grindot the architect?” said he to the artists.

He whistled twice, using the end of his riding-whip, and the lodge-keeper came forward.

“Take these gentlemen to their rooms⁠—Nos. 14 and 15; Madame Moreau will give you the keys. Light fires this evening if necessary, and carry up their things.⁠—I am instructed by Monsieur le Comte to ask you to dine with me,” he added, addressing the artists. “At five, as in Paris. If you are sportsmen, you can be well amused. I have permission to shoot and fish, and we have twelve thousand acres of shooting outside our own grounds.”

Oscar, the painter, and Mistigris, one as much disconcerted as the other, exchanged glances. Still, Mistigris, faithful to his instincts, exclaimed:

“Pooh, never throw the candle after the shade! On we go!”

Little Husson followed the steward, who led the way, walking quickly across the park.

“Jacques,” said he to one of his sons, “go and tell your mother that young Husson has arrived, and say that I am obliged to go over to les Moulineaux for a few minutes.”

Moreau, now about fifty years of age, a dark man of medium height, had a stern expression. His bilious complexion, highly colored nevertheless by a country life, suggested, at first sight, a character very unlike what his really was. Everything contributed to the illusion. His hair was turning gray, his blue eyes and a large aquiline nose gave him a sinister expression, all the more so because his eyes were too close together; still, his full lips, the shape of his face, and the good-humor of his address, would, to a keen observer, have been indication of kindliness. His very decided manner and abrupt way of speech impressed Oscar immensely with a sense of his penetration, arising from his real affection for the boy. Brought up by his mother to look up to the steward as a great man, Oscar always felt small in Moreau’s presence; and now, finding himself at Presles, he felt an oppressive uneasiness, as if he had some ill to fear from this fatherly friend, who was his only protector.

“Why, my dear Oscar, you do not look glad to be here,” said the steward. “But you will have plenty to amuse you; you can learn to ride, to shoot, and hunt.”

“I know nothing of such things,” said Oscar dully.

“But I have asked you here on purpose to teach you.”

“Mamma told me not to stay more than a fortnight, because Madame Moreau⁠—”

“Oh, well, we shall see,” replied Moreau, almost offended by Oscar’s doubts of his conjugal influence.

Moreau’s youngest son, a lad of fifteen, active and brisk, now came running up.

“Here,” said his father, “take your new companion to your mother.”

And the steward himself went off by the shortest path to a keeper’s hut between the park and the wood.

The handsome lodge, given by the Count as his land-steward’s residence, had been built some years before the Revolution by the owner of the famous estate of Cassan or Bergeret, a farmer-general of enormous wealth, who made himself as notorious for extravagance as Bodard, Pâris, and Bouret, laying out gardens, diverting rivers, building hermitages, Chinese temples, and other costly magnificence.

This house, in the middle of a large garden, of which one wall divided it from the outbuildings of Presles, had formerly had its entrance on the village High Street. Monsieur de Sérizy’s father, when he purchased the property, had only to pull down the dividing wall and build up the front gate to make this plot and house part of the outbuildings. Then, by pulling down another wall, he added to his park all the garden land that the former owner had purchased to complete his ring fence.

The lodge, built of freestone, was in the Louis XV style, with linen-pattern panels under the windows, like those on the colonnades of the Place Louis XV, in stiff, angular folds; it consisted, on the ground floor, of a fine drawing-room opening into a bedroom, and of a dining-room, with a billiard-room adjoining. These two suites, parallel to each other, were divided by a sort of anteroom or hall, and the stairs. The hall was decorated by the doors of the drawing-room and dining-room, both handsomely ornamental. The kitchen was under the dining-room, for there was a flight of ten outside steps.

Madame Moreau had taken the first floor for her own, and had transformed what had been the best bedroom into a boudoir; this boudoir, and the drawing-room below, handsomely fitted up with the best pickings of the old furniture from the château, would certainly have done no discredit to the mansion of a lady of fashion. The drawing room, hung with blue-and-white damask, the spoils of a state bed, and with old gilt-wood furniture upholstered with the same silk, displayed ample curtains to the doors and windows. Some pictures that had formerly been panels, with flower-stands, a few modern tables, and handsome lamps, besides an antique hanging chandelier of cut glass, gave the room a very dignified effect. The carpet was old Persian.

The boudoir was altogether modern and fitted to Madame Moreau’s taste, in imitation of a tent, with blue silk ropes on a light gray ground. There was the usual divan with pillows and cushions for the feet, and the flower-stands, carefully cherished by the head-gardener, were a joy to the eye with their pyramids of flowers.

The dining-room and billiard-room were fitted with mahogany. All round the house the steward’s lady had planned a flower-garden, beautifully kept, and beyond it lay the park. Clumps of foreign shrubs shut out the stables, and to give admission from the road to her visitors she had opened a gate where the old entrance had been built up.

Thus, the dependent position filled by the Moreaus was cleverly glossed over; and they were the better able to figure as rich folks managing a friend’s estate for their pleasure, because neither the Count nor the Countess ever came to quash their pretensions; and the liberality of Monsieur de Sérizy’s concessions allowed of their living in abundance, the luxury of country homes. Dairy produce, eggs, poultry, game, fruit, forage, flowers, wood, and vegetables⁠—the steward and his wife had all of these in profusion, and bought literally nothing but butcher’s meat and the wine and foreign produce necessary to their lordly extravagance. The poultry-wife made the bread; and, in fact, for the last few years, Moreau had paid his butcher’s bill with the pigs of the farm, keeping only as much pork as he needed.

One day the Countess, always very generous to her former lady’s maid, made Madame Moreau a present, as a souvenir perhaps, of a little traveling chaise of a past fashion, which Moreau had furbished up, and in which his wife drove out behind a pair of good horses, useful at other times in the grounds. Besides this pair, the steward had his saddle-horse. He ploughed part of the park land, and raised grain enough to feed the beasts and servants; he cut three hundred tons more or less of good hay, accounting for no more than one hundred, encroaching on the license vaguely granted by the Count; and instead of using his share of the produce on the premises, he sold it. He kept his poultry-farm, his pigeons, and his cows on the crops from the parkland; but then the manure from his stables was used in the Count’s garden. Each of these pilfering acts had an excuse ready.

Madame Moreau’s house-servant was the daughter of one of the gardeners, and waited on her and cooked; she was helped in the housework by a girl, who also attended to the poultry and dairy. Moreau had engaged an invalided soldier named Brochon to look after the horses and do the dirty work.

At Nerville, at Chauvry, at Beaumont, at Maffliers, at Préroles, at Nointel, the steward’s pretty wife was everywhere received by persons who did not, or affected not to know her original position in life. And Moreau could confer obligations. He could use his master’s interest in matters which are of immense importance in the depths of the country though trivial in Paris. After securing for friends the appointments of Justice of the Peace at Beaumont and at l’Isle-Adam, he had, in the course of the same year, saved an Inspector of Forest-lands from dismissal, and obtained the Cross of the Legion of Honor for the quartermaster at Beaumont. So there was never a festivity among the more respectable neighbors without Monsieur and Madame Moreau being invited. The Curé and the Mayor of Presles were to be seen every evening at their house. A man can hardly help being a good fellow when he has made himself so comfortable.

So Madame la Régisseuse⁠—a pretty woman, and full of airs, like every grand lady’s servant who, when she marries, apes her mistress⁠—introduced the latest fashions, wore the most expensive shoes, and never walked out but in fine weather. Though her husband gave her no more than five hundred francs a year for dress, this in the country is a very large sum, especially when judiciously spent; and his “lady,” fair, bright, and fresh-looking, at the age of thirty-six, and still slight, neat, and attractive in spite of her three children, still played the girl, and gave herself the airs of a princess. If, as she drove past in her open chaise on her way to Beaumont, some stranger happened to inquire, “Who is that?” Madame Moreau was furious if a native of the place replied, “She is the steward’s wife at Presles.” She aimed at being taken for the mistress of the château.

She amused herself with patronizing the villagers, as a great lady might have done. Her husband’s power with the Count, proved in so many ways, hindered the townsfolk from laughing at Madame Moreau, who was a person of importance in the eyes of the peasantry.

Estelle, however⁠—her name was Estelle⁠—did not interfere in the management, any more than a stockbroker’s wife interferes in dealings on the Bourse; she even relied on her husband for the administration of the house and of their income. Quite confident of her own powers of pleasing, she was miles away from imagining that this delightful life, which had gone on for seventeen years, could ever be in danger; however, on hearing that the Count had resolved on restoring the splendid château of Presles, she understood that all her enjoyments were imperiled, and she had persuaded her husband to come to terms with Léger, so as to have a retreat at l’Isle-Adam. She could not have borne to find herself in an almost servile position in the presence of her former mistress, who would undoubtedly laugh at her on finding her established at the lodge in a style that aped the lady of fashion.

The origin of the deep-seated enmity between the Reyberts and the Moreaus lay in a stab inflicted on Madame Moreau by Madame de Reybert in revenge for a pinprick that the steward’s wife had dared to give on the first arrival of the Reyberts, lest her supremacy should be infringed on by the lady née de Corroy. Madame de Reybert had mentioned, and perhaps for the first time informed the neighborhood, of Madame Moreau’s original calling. The words “lady’s maid” flew from lip to lip. All those who envied the Moreaus⁠—and they must have been many⁠—at Beaumont, at l’Isle-Adam, at Maffliers, at Champagne, at Nerville, at Chauvry, at Baillet, at Moisselles, made such pregnant comments that more than one spark from this conflagration fell into the Moreaus’ home. For four years, now, the Reyberts, excommunicated by their pretty rival, had become the object of so much hostile animadversion from her partisans, that their position would have been untenable but for the thought of vengeance which had sustained them to this day.

The Moreaus, who were very good friends with Grindot the architect, had been told by him of the arrival ere long of a painter commissioned to finish the decorative panels at the château, Schinner having executed the more important pieces. This great painter recommended the artist we have seen traveling with Mistigris, to paint the borders, arabesques, and other accessory decorations. Hence, for two days past, Madame Moreau had been preparing her war-paint and sitting expectant. An artist who was to board with her for some weeks was worthy of some outlay. Schinner and his wife had been quartered in the château, where, by the Count’s orders, they had been entertained like my lord himself. Grindot, who boarded with the Moreaus, had treated the great artist with so much respect, that neither the steward nor his wife had ventured on any familiarity. And, indeed, the richest and most noble landowners in the district had vied with each other in entertaining Schinner and his wife. So now Madame Moreau, much pleased at the prospect of turning the tables, promised herself that she would sound the trumpet before the artist who was to be her guest, and make him out a match in talent for Schinner.

Although on the two previous days she had achieved very coquettish toilets, the steward’s pretty wife had husbanded her resources too well not to have reserved the most bewitching till the Saturday, never doubting that on that day at any rate the artist would arrive to dinner. She had shod herself in bronze kid with fine thread stockings. A dress of finely striped pink-and-white muslin, a pink belt with a chased gold buckle, a cross and heart round her neck, and wristlets of black velvet on her bare arms⁠—Madame de Sérizy had fine arms, and was fond of displaying them⁠—gave Madame Moreau the style of a fashionable Parisian. She put on a very handsome Leghorn hat, graced with a bunch of moss roses made by Nattier, and under its broad shade her fair hair flowed in glossy curls.

Having ordered a first-rate dinner and carefully inspected the rooms, she went out at an hour which brought her to the large flowerbed in the court of the château, like the lady of the house, just when the coach would pass. Over her head she held an elegant pink silk parasol lined with white and trimmed with fringe. On seeing Pierrotin hand over to the lodge-keeper the artist’s extraordinary-looking luggage, and perceiving no owner, Estelle had returned home lamenting the waste of another carefully arranged dress. And, like most people who have dressed for an occasion, she felt quite incapable of any occupation but that of doing nothing in her drawing-room while waiting for the passing of the Beaumont coach which should come through an hour after Pierrotin’s, though it did not start from Paris till one o’clock; thus she was waiting at home while the two young artists were dressing for dinner. In fact, the young painter and Mistigris were so overcome by the description of lovely Madame Moreau given them by the gardener whom they had questioned, that it was obvious to them both that they must get themselves into their best “toggery.” So they donned their very best before presenting themselves at the steward’s house, whither they were conducted by Jacques Moreau, the eldest of the children, a stalwart youth, dressed in the English fashion, in a round jacket with a turned-down collar, and as happy during the holidays as a fish in water, here on the estate where his mother reigned supreme.

“Mamma,” said he, “here are the two artists come from Monsieur Schinner.”

Madame Moreau, very agreeably surprised, rose, bid her son set chairs, and displayed all her graces.

“Mamma, little Husson is with father; I am to go to fetch him,” whispered the boy in her ear.

“There is no hurry, you can stop and amuse him,” said the mother.

The mere words “there is no hurry” showed the two artists how entirely unimportant was their traveling companion, but the tone also betrayed the indifference of a stepmother for her stepchild. In fact, Madame Moreau, who, for seventeen years of married life, could not fail to be aware of her husband’s attachment to Madame Clapart and young Husson, hated the mother and son in so overt a manner that it is easy to understand why Moreau had never till now ventured to invite Oscar to Presles.

“We are enjoined, my husband and I,” said she to the two artists, “to do the honors of the château. We are fond of art, and more especially of artists,” said she, with a simper, “and I beg you to consider yourselves quite at home there. In the country, you see, there is no ceremony; liberty is indispensable, otherwise life is too insipid. We have had Monsieur Schinner here already⁠—”

Mistigris gave his companion a mischievous wink.

“You know him, of course,” said Estelle, after a pause.

“Who does not know him, madame?” replied the painter.

“He is as well known as the parish birch,” added Mistigris.

“Monsieur Grindot mentioned your name,” said Madame Moreau, “but really I⁠—”

“Joseph Bridau, madame,” replied the artist, extremely puzzled as to what this woman could be.

Mistigris was beginning to fume inwardly at this fair lady’s patronizing tone; still, he waited, as Bridau did too, for some movement, some chance word to enlighten them, one of those expressions of assumed fine-ladyism, which painters, those born and cruel observers of folly⁠—the perennial food of their pencil⁠—seize on in an instant. In the first place, Estelle’s large hands and feet, those of a peasant from the district of Saint-Lô, struck them at once; and before long one or two lady’s-maid’s phrases, modes of speech that gave the lie to the elegance of her dress, betrayed their prey into the hands of the artist and his apprentice. They exchanged a look which pledged them both to take Estelle quite seriously as a pastime during their stay.

“You are so fond of art, perhaps you cultivate it with success, madame?” said Joseph Bridau.

“No. Though my education was not neglected, it was purely commercial. But I have such a marked and delicate feeling for art, that Monsieur Schinner always begged me, when he had finished a piece, to give him my opinion.”

“Just as Molière consulted Laforêt,” said Mistigris.

Not knowing that Laforêt was a servant-girl, Madame Moreau responded with a graceful droop, showing that in her ignorance she regarded this speech as a compliment.

“How is it that he did not propose just to knock off your head?” said Bridau. “Painters are generally on the lookout for handsome women.”

“What is your meaning, pray?” said Madame Moreau, on whose face dawned the wrath of an offended queen.

“In studio slang, to knock a thing off is to sketch it,” said Mistigris, in an ingratiating tone, “and all we ask is to have handsome heads to sketch. And we sometimes say in admiration that a woman’s beauty has knocked us over.”

“Ah, I did not know the origin of the phrase!” replied she, with a look of languishing sweetness at Mistigris.

“My pupil, Monsieur Léon de Lora,” said Bridau, “has a great talent for likeness. He would be only too happy, fair being, to leave you a souvenir of his skill by painting your charming face.”

And Bridau signaled to Mistigris, as much as to say, “Come, drive it home, she really is not amiss!”

Taking this hint, Léon de Lora moved to the sofa by Estelle’s side, and took her hand, which she left in his.

“Oh! if only as a surprise to your husband, madame, you could give me a few sittings in secret, I would try to excel myself. You are so lovely, so young, so charming! A man devoid of talent might become a genius with you for his model! In your eyes he would find⁠—”

“And we would represent your sweet children in our arabesques,” said Joseph, interrupting Mistigris.

“I would rather have them in my own drawing-room; but that would be asking too much,” said she, looking coquettishly at Bridau.

“Beauty, madame, is a queen whom painters worship, and who has every right to command them.”

“They are quite charming,” thought Madame Moreau.⁠—“Do you like driving out in the evening, after dinner, in an open carriage, in the woods?”

“Oh! oh! oh! oh!” cried Mistigris, in ecstatic tones at each added detail. “Why, Presles will be an earthly paradise.”

“With a fair-haired Eve, a young and bewitching woman,” added Bridau.

Just as Madame Moreau was preening herself, and soaring into the seventh heaven, she was brought down again like a kite by a tug at the cord.

“Madame!” exclaimed the maid, bouncing in like a cannon ball.

“Bless me, Rosalie, what can justify you in coming in like this without being called?”

Rosalie did not trouble her head about this apostrophe, but said in her mistress’ ear:

“Monsieur le Comte is here.”

“Did he ask for me?” said the steward’s wife.

“No, madame⁠—but⁠—he wants his portmanteau and the key of his room.”

“Let him have them then,” said she, with a cross shrug to disguise her uneasiness.

“Mamma, here is Oscar Husson!” cried her youngest son, bringing in Oscar, who, as red as a poppy, dared not come forward as he saw the two painters in different dress.

“So here you are at last, boy,” said Estelle coldly. “You are going to dress, I hope?” she went on, after looking at him from head to foot, with great contempt. “I suppose your mother has not brought you up to dine in company in such clothes as those.”

“Oh, no,” said the ruthless Mistigris, “a coming diplomatist must surely have a seat⁠—to his trousers! A coat to dine saves wine.”

“A coming diplomatist?” cried Madame Moreau.

The tears rose to poor Oscar’s eyes as he looked from Joseph to Léon.

“Only a jest by the way,” replied Joseph, who wished to help Oscar in his straits.

“The boy wanted to make fun as we did, and he tried to humbug,” said the merciless Mistigris. “And now he finds himself the ass with a lion’s grin.”

“Madame,” said Rosalie, coming back to the drawing-room door, “his Excellency has ordered dinner for eight persons at six o’clock; what is to be done?”

While Estelle and her maid were holding counsel, the artists and Oscar gazed at each other, their eyes big with terrible apprehensions.

“His Excellency⁠—Who?” said Joseph Bridau.

“Why, Monsieur le Comte de Sérizy,” replied little Moreau.

“Was it he, by chance, in the coucou?” said Léon de Lora.

“Oh!” exclaimed Oscar, “the Comte de Sérizy would surely never travel but in a coach and four.”

“How did he come, madame⁠—the Comte de Sérizy?” the painter asked of Madame Moreau when she came back very much upset.

“I have no idea,” said she. “I cannot account for his coming, nor guess what he has come for.⁠—And Moreau is out!”

“His Excellency begs you will go over to the château, Monsieur Schinner,” said a gardener coming to the door, “and he begs you will give him the pleasure of your company at dinner, as well as Monsieur Mistigris.”

“Our goose is cooked!” said the lad with a laugh. “The man we took for a country worthy in Pierrotin’s chaise was the Count. So true is it that what you seek you never bind.”

Oscar was almost turning to a pillar of salt; for on hearing this, his throat felt as salt as the sea.

“And you! Who told him all about his wife’s adorers and his skin disease?” said Mistigris to Oscar.

“What do you mean?” cried the steward’s wife, looking at the two artists, who went off laughing at Oscar’s face.

Oscar stood speechless, thunderstruck; hearing nothing, though Madame Moreau was questioning him and shaking him violently by one of his arms, which she had seized and clutched tightly; but she was obliged to leave him where he was without having extracted a reply, for Rosalie called her again to give out linen and silver-plate, and to request her to attend in person to the numerous orders given by the Count. The house-servants, the gardeners, everybody on the place, were rushing to and fro in such confusion as may be imagined.

The master had in fact dropped on the household like a shell from a mortar. From above la Cave the Count had made his way by a path familiar to him to the gamekeeper’s hut, and reached it before Moreau. The gamekeeper was amazed to see his real master.

“Is Moreau here, I see his horse waiting?” asked Monsieur de Sérizy.

“No, monseigneur; but as he is going over to les Moulineaux before dinner, he left his horse here while he ran across to give some orders at the house.”

The gamekeeper had no idea of the effect of this reply, which, under existing circumstances, was, in the eyes of a clear-sighted man, tantamount to assurance.

“If you value your place,” said the Count to the keeper, “ride as fast as you can pelt to Beaumont on this horse, and deliver to Monsieur Margueron a note I will give you.”

The Count went into the man’s lodge, wrote a line, folded it in such a manner that it could not be opened without detection, and gave it to the man as soon as he was in the saddle.

“Not a word to any living soul,” said he. “And you, madame,” he added to the keeper’s wife, “if Moreau is surprised at not finding his horse, tell him that I took it.”

And the Count went off across the park, through the gate which was opened for him at his nod.

Inured though a man may be to the turmoil of political life, with its excitement and vicissitudes, the soul of a man who, at the Count’s age, is still firm enough to love, is also young enough to feel a betrayal. It was so hard to believe that Moreau was deceiving him, that at Saint-Brice Monsieur de Sérizy had supposed him to be not so much in league with Léger and the notary as, in fact, led away by them. And so, standing in the inn gateway, as he heard Père Léger talking to the innkeeper, he intended to forgive his land-steward after a severe reproof.

And then, strange to say, the dishonesty of his trusted agent had seemed no more than an episode when Oscar had blurted out the noble infirmities of the intrepid traveler, the Minister of Napoleon. Secrets so strictly kept could only have been revealed by Moreau, who had no doubt spoken contemptuously of his benefactor to Madame de Sérizy’s maid, or to the erewhile Aspasia of the Directoire.

As he made his way down the crossroad to the château, the peer of France, the great minister, had shed bitter tears, weeping as a boy weeps. They were his last tears that he shed! Every human feeling at once was so cruelly, so mercilessly attacked, that this self-controlled man rushed on across his park like a hunted animal.

When Moreau asked for his horse, and the keeper’s wife replied:

“Monsieur le Comte has just taken it.”

“Who⁠—Monsieur le Comte?” cried he.

“Monsieur le Comte de Sérizy, the master,” said she. “Perhaps he is at the château,” added she, to get rid of the steward, who, quite bewildered by this occurrence, went off towards the house.

But he presently returned to question the keeper’s wife, for it had struck him that there was some serious motive for his master’s secret arrival and unwonted conduct. The woman, terrified at finding herself in a vise, as it were, between the Count and the steward, had shut herself into her lodge, quite determined only to open the door to her husband. Moreau, more and more uneasy, hurried across to the gatekeeper’s lodge, where he was told that the Count was dressing. Rosalie, whom he met, announced: “Seven people to dine at the Count’s table.”

Moreau next went home, where he found the poultry-girl in hot discussion with an odd-looking young man.

“Monsieur le Comte told us, ‘Mina’s aide-de-camp and a colonel,’ ” the girl insisted.

“I am not a colonel,” replied Georges.

“Well, but is your name Georges?”

“What is the matter?” asked the steward, intervening.

“Monsieur, my name is Georges Marest; I am the son of a rich hardware dealer, wholesale, in the Rue Saint-Martin, and I have come on business to Monsieur le Comte de Sérizy from Maître Crottat, his notary⁠—I am his second clerk.”

“And I can only repeat, sir, what monsieur said to me⁠—‘A gentleman will come,’ says he, ‘a Colonel Czerni-Georges, aide-de-camp to Mina, who traveled down in Pierrotin’s chaise. If he asks for me, show him into the drawing-room.’ ”

“There is no joking with his Excellency,” said the steward. “You had better go in, monsieur.⁠—But how is it that his Excellency came down without announcing his purpose? And how does he know that you traveled by Pierrotin’s chaise?”

“It is perfectly clear,” said the clerk, “that the Count is the gentleman who, but for the civility of a young man, would have had to ride on the front seat of Pierrotin’s coucou.”

“On the front seat of Pierrotin’s coucou?” cried the steward and the farm-girl.

“I am quite sure of it from what this girl tells me,” said Georges Marest.

“But how?” the steward began.

“Ah, there you are!” cried Georges. “To humbug the other travelers, I told them a heap of cock-and-bull stories about Egypt, Greece, and Spain. I had spurs on, and I gave myself out as a colonel in the cavalry⁠—a mere joke.”

“And what was the gentleman like, whom you believe to be the Count?” asked Moreau.

“Why, he has a face the color of brick,” said Georges, “with perfectly white hair and black eyebrows.”

“That is the man!”

“I am done for!” said Georges Marest.

“Why?”

“I made fun of his Orders.”

“Pooh, he is a thorough good fellow; you will have amused him. Come to the château forthwith,” said Moreau. “I am going up to the Count.⁠—Where did he leave you?”

“At the top of the hill.”

“I can make neither head nor tail of it!” cried Moreau.

“After all, I poked fun at him, but I did not insult him,” said the clerk to himself.

“And what are you here for?” asked the steward.

“I have brought the deed of sale of the farmlands of les Moulineaux, ready made out.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Moreau. “I don’t understand!”

Moreau felt his heart beat painfully when, after knocking two raps on his master’s door, he heard in reply:

“Is that you, Monsieur Moreau?”

“Yes, monseigneur.”

“Come in.”

The Count was dressed in white trousers and thin boots, a white waistcoat, and a black coat on which glittered, on the right-hand side, the star of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, and on the left, from a buttonhole, hung that of the Golden Fleece from a gold chain; the blue ribbon was conspicuous across his waistcoat. He had dressed his hair himself, and had no doubt got himself up to do the honors of Presles to Margueron, and, perhaps, to impress that worthy with the atmosphere of grandeur.

“Well, monsieur,” said the Count, who remained sitting, but allowed Moreau to stand, “so we cannot come to terms with Margueron?”

“At the present moment he wants too much for his farm.”

“But why should he not come over here to talk about it?” said the Count in an absentminded way.

“He is ill, monseigneur⁠—”

“Are you sure?”

“I went over there⁠—”

“Monsieur,” said the Count, assuming a stern expression that was terrible, “what would you do to a man whom you had allowed to see you dress a wound you wished to keep secret, and who went off to make game of it with a street trollop?”

“I should give him a sound thrashing.”

“And if, in addition to this, you discovered that he was cheating your confidence and robbing you?”

“I should try to catch him out and send him to the hulks.”

“Listen, Monsieur Moreau. You have, I suppose, discussed my health with Madame Clapart and made fun at her house of my devotion to my wife, for little Husson was giving to the passengers in a public conveyance a vast deal of information with reference to my cures, in my presence, this very morning, and in what words! God knows! He dared to slander my wife.

“Again, I heard from Farmer Léger’s own lips, as he returned from Paris in Pierrotin’s chaise, of the plan concocted by the notary of Beaumont with him, and with you, with reference to les Moulineaux. If you have been at all to see Margueron, it was to instruct him to sham illness; he is so little ill that I expect him to dinner, and he is coming.⁠—Well, monsieur, as to your having made a fortune of two hundred and fifty thousand francs in seventeen years⁠—I forgive you. I understand it. If you had but asked me for what you took from me, or what others offered you, I would have given it to you; you have a family to provide for. Even with your want of delicacy you have treated me better than another might have done, that I believe⁠—

“But that you, who know all that I have done for my country, for France, you who have seen me sit up a hundred nights and more to work for the Emperor, or toiling eighteen hours a day for three months on end; that you, who know my worship of Madame de Sérizy, should have gossiped about it before a boy, have betrayed my secrets to the mockery of a Madame Husson⁠—”

“Monseigneur!”

“It is unpardonable. To damage a man’s interest is nothing, but to strike at his heart!⁠—Ah! you do not know what you have done!”

The Count covered his face with his hands and was silent for a moment.

“I leave you in possession of what you have,” he went on, “and I will forget you.⁠—As a point of dignity, of honor, we will part without quarreling, for, at this moment, I can remember what your father did for mine.

“You must come to terms⁠—good terms⁠—with Monsieur de Reybert, your successor. Be calm, as I am. Do not make yourself a spectacle for fools. Above all, no bluster and no haggling. Though you have forfeited my confidence, try to preserve the decorum of wealth.⁠—As to the little wretch who has half killed me, he is not to sleep at Presles. Send him to the inn; I cannot answer for what I might do if he crossed my path.”

“I do not deserve such leniency, monseigneur,” said Moreau, with tears in his eyes. “If I had been utterly dishonest I should have five hundred thousand francs; and indeed I will gladly account for every franc in detail!⁠—But permit me to assure you, monseigneur, that when I spoke of you to Madame Clapart it was never in derision. On the contrary, it was to deplore your condition and to ask her whether she did not know of some remedy, unfamiliar to the medical profession, which the common people use.⁠—I have spoken of you in the boy’s presence when he was asleep⁠—but he heard me, it would seem!⁠—and always in terms of the deepest affection and respect. Unfortunately, a blunder is sometimes punished as a crime. Still, while I bow to the decisions of your just anger, I would have you to know what really happened. Yes, it was heart to heart that I spoke of you to Madame Clapart. And only ask my wife; never have I mentioned these matters to her⁠—”

“That will do,” said the Count, whose conviction was complete. “We are not children; the past is irrevocable.⁠ ⁠… Go and set your affairs and mine in order. You may remain in the lodge till the month of October. Monsieur and Madame de Reybert will live in the château. Above all, try to live with them as gentlemen should⁠—hating each other, but keeping up appearances.”

The Count and Moreau went downstairs, Moreau as white as the Count’s hair, Monsieur de Sérizy calm and dignified.

While this scene was going forward, the Beaumont coach, leaving Paris at one o’clock, had stopped at the gate of Presles to set down Maître Crottat, who, in obedience to the Count’s orders, was shown into the drawing-room to wait for him; there he found his clerk excessively crestfallen, in company with the two painters, all three conspicuously uncomfortable. Monsieur de Reybert, a man of fifty, with a very surly expression, had brought with him old Margueron and the notary from Beaumont, who held a bundle of leases and title-deeds.

When this assembled party saw the Count appear in full court costume, Georges Marest had a spasm in the stomach, and Joseph Bridau felt a qualm; but Mistigris, who was himself in his Sunday clothes, and who indeed had no crime on his conscience, said loud enough to be heard:

“Well, he looks much nicer now.”

“You little rascal,” said the Count, drawing him towards him by one ear, “so we both deal in decorations!⁠—Do you recognize your work, my dear Schinner?” he went on, pointing to the ceiling.

“Monseigneur,” said the artist, “I was so foolish as to assume so famous a name out of bravado; but today’s experience makes it incumbent on me to do something good and win glory for that of Joseph Bridau.”

“You took my part,” said the Count eagerly, “and I hope you will do me the pleasure of dining with me⁠—you and your witty Mistigris.”

“You do not know what you are exposing yourself to,” said the audacious youngster; “an empty stomach knows no peers.”

“Bridau,” said the Count, struck by a sudden reminiscence, “are you related to one of the greatest workers under the Empire, a brigadier in command who died a victim to his zeal?”

“I am his son, monseigneur,” said Joseph, bowing.

“Then you are welcome here,” replied the Count, taking the artist’s hand in both his own; “I knew your father, and you may depend on me as on⁠—an American uncle,” said Monsieur de Sérizy, smiling. “But you are too young to have a pupil⁠—to whom does Mistigris belong?”

“To my friend Schinner, who has lent him to me,” replied Joseph. “Mistigris’ name is Léon de Lora. Monseigneur, if you remember my father, will you condescend to bear in mind his other son, who stands accused of conspiring against the State, and is on his trial before the Supreme Court⁠—”

“To be sure,” said the Count. “I will bear it in mind, believe me.⁠—As to Prince Czerni-Georges, Ali Pasha’s ally, and Mina’s aide-de-camp⁠—” said the Count, turning to Georges.

“He?⁠—my second clerk?” cried Crottat.

“You are under a mistake, Maître Crottat,” said Monsieur de Sérizy, very severely. “A clerk who hopes ever to become a notary does not leave important documents in a diligence at the mercy of his fellow-travelers! A clerk who hopes to become a notary does not spend twenty francs between Paris and Moisselles! A clerk who hopes to become a notary does not expose himself to arrest as a deserter⁠—”

“Monseigneur,” said Georges Marest, “I may have amused myself by playing a practical joke on a party of travelers, but⁠—”

“Do not interrupt his Excellency,” said his master, giving him a violent nudge in the ribs.

“A notary ought to develop early the gifts of discretion, prudence, and discernment, and not mistake a Minister of State for a candlemaker.”

“I accept sentence for my errors,” said Georges, “but I did not leave my papers at the mercy⁠—”

“You are at this moment committing the error of giving the lie to a Minister of State, a peer of France, a gentleman, an old man⁠—and a client.⁠—Look for your deed of sale.”

The clerk turned over the papers in his portfolio.

“Do not make a mess of your papers,” said the Count, taking the document out of his pocket. “Here is the deed you are seeking.”

Crottat turned it over three times, so much was he amazed at receiving it from the hands of his noble client.

“What, sir!”⁠—he at last began, addressing Georges.

“If I had not taken it,” the Count went on, “Père Léger⁠—who is not such a fool as you fancy him from his questions as to agriculture, since they might have taught you that a man should always be thinking of his business⁠—Père Léger might have got hold of it and discovered my plans.⁠—You also will give me the pleasure of your company at dinner, but on condition of telling us the history of the Muslim’s execution at Smyrna, and of finishing the memoirs of some client which you read, no doubt, before publication.”

“A trouncing for bouncing,” said Léon de Lora, in a low voice to Joseph Bridau.

“Gentlemen,” said the Count to the notary from Beaumont, to Crottat, Margueron, and Reybert, “come into the other room. We will not sit down to dinner till we have concluded our bargain; for, as my friend Mistigris says, we must know when to creep silent.”

“Well, he is a thoroughly good fellow,” said Léon de Lora to Georges Marest.

“Yes; but if he is a good fellow, my governor is not, and he will request me to play my tricks elsewhere.”

“Well, you like traveling,” said Bridau.

“What a dressing that boy will get from Monsieur and Madame Moreau!” cried Léon de Lora.

“The little idiot!” said Georges. “But for him the Count would have thought it all very good fun. Well, well, it is a useful lesson, and if I am caught chattering in a coach again⁠—”

“Oh, it is a stupid thing to do,” said Joseph Bridau.

“And vulgar too,” said Mistigris. “Keep your tongue to clean your teeth.”

While the business of the farm was being discussed between Monsieur Margueron and the Comte de Sérizy, with the assistance of three notaries, and in the presence of Monsieur de Reybert, Moreau was slowly making his way home. He went in without looking about him, and sat down on a sofa in the drawing-room, while Oscar Husson crept into a corner out of sight, so terrified was he by the steward’s white face.

“Well, my dear,” said Estelle, coming in, fairly tired out by all she had had to do, “what is the matter?”

“My dear, we are ruined, lost beyond redemption. I am no longer land-steward of Presles! The Count has withdrawn his confidence.”

“And what has caused—?”

“Old Léger, who was in Pierrotin’s chaise, let out all about the farm of les Moulineaux; but it is not that which has cut me off forever from his favor⁠—”

“What, then?”

“Oscar spoke ill of the Countess, and talked of monseigneur’s ailments⁠—”

“Oscar?” cried Madame Moreau. “You are punished by your own act! A pretty viper you have nursed in your bosom! How often have I told you⁠—”

“That will do,” said Moreau hoarsely.

At this instant Estelle and her husband detected Oscar huddled in a corner. Moreau pounced on the luckless boy like a kite on its prey, seized him by the collar of his olive-green coat, and dragged him into the daylight of a window.

“Speak! What did you say to monseigneur in the coach? What devil loosened your tongue, when you always stand moonstruck if I ask you a question? What did you do it for?” said the steward with terrific violence.

Oscar, too much scared for tears, kept silence, as motionless as a statue.

“Come and ask his Excellency’s pardon!” said Moreau.

“As if his Excellency cared about a vermin like him!” shrieked Estelle in a fury.

“Come⁠—come to the château!” Moreau repeated.

Oscar collapsed, a lifeless heap on the floor.

“Will you come, I say?” said Moreau, his rage increasing every moment.

“No, no; have pity!” cried Oscar, who could not face a punishment worse than death.

Moreau took the boy by the collar and dragged him like a corpse across the courtyard, which rang with the boy’s cries and sobs; he hauled him up the steps and flung him howling, and as rigid as a post, in the drawing-room at the feet of the Count, who, having settled for the purchase of les Moulineaux, was just passing into the dining-room with his friends.

“On your knees, on your knees, wretched boy. Ask pardon of the man who has fed your mind by getting you a scholarship at college,” cried Moreau.

Oscar lay with his face on the ground, foaming with rage. Everybody was startled. Moreau, quite beside himself, was purple in the face from the rush of blood to his head.

“This boy is mere vanity,” said the Count, after waiting in vain for Oscar’s apology. “Pride can humble itself, for there is dignity in some self-humiliation.⁠—I am afraid you will never make anything of this fellow.”

And the Minister passed on.

Moreau led Oscar away and back to his own house.

While the horses were being harnessed to the traveling chaise, he wrote the following letter to Madame Clapart:⁠—

“Oscar, my dear, has brought me to ruin. In the course of his journey in Pierrotin’s chaise this morning he spoke of the flirtations of Madame la Comtesse to his Excellency himself, who was traveling incognito, and told the Count his own secrets as to the skin disease brought on by long nights of hard work in his various high offices.⁠—After dismissing me from my place, the Count desired me not to allow Oscar to sleep at Presles, but to send him home. In obedience to his orders, I am having my horses put to my wife’s carriage, and Brochon, my groom, will take the little wretch home.

“My wife and I are in a state of despair, which you may imagine, but which I cannot attempt to describe. I will go to see you in a few days, for I must make my plans. I have three children; I must think of the future, and I do not yet know what to decide on, for I am determined to show the Count the value of seventeen years of the life of such a man as I. I have two hundred and sixty thousand francs, and I mean to acquire such a fortune as will allow me to be, some day, not much less than his Excellency’s equal. At this instant I feel that I could remove mountains and conquer insurmountable difficulties. What a lever is such a humiliating scene!

“Whose blood can Oscar have in his veins? I cannot compliment you on your son; his behavior is that of an owl. At this moment of writing he has not yet uttered a word in reply to my questions and my wife’s. Is he becoming idiotic, or is he idiotic already? My dear friend, did you not give him due injunctions before he started? How much misfortune you would have spared me by coming with him, as I begged you. If you were afraid of Estelle, you could have stayed at Moisselles. However, it is all over now. Farewell till we meet, soon.⁠—Your faithful friend and servant,

At eight o’clock that evening Madame Clapart had come in from a little walk with her husband, and sat knitting stockings for Oscar by the light of a single dip. Monsieur Clapart was expecting a friend named Poiret, who sometimes came in for a game of dominoes, for he never trusted himself to spend an evening in a café. In spite of temperance, enforced on him by his narrow means, Clapart could not have answered for his abstinence when in the midst of food and drink, and surrounded by other men, whose laughter might have nettled him.

“I am afraid Poiret may have been and gone,” said he to his wife.

“The lodge-keeper would have told us, my dear,” replied his wife.

“She may have forgotten.”

“Why should she forget?”

“It would not be the first time she has forgotten things that concern us; God knows, anything is good enough for people who have no servants!”

“Well, well,” said the poor woman, to change the subject and escape her husband’s pin-stabs. “Oscar is at Presles by this time; he will be very happy in that beautiful place, that fine park⁠—”

“Oh yes, expect great things!” retorted Clapart. “He will make hay there with a vengeance!”

“Will you never cease to be spiteful to that poor boy? What harm has he done you? Dear Heaven! if ever we are in easy circumstances we shall owe it to him perhaps, for he has a good heart.”

“Our bones will be gelatine long before that boy succeeds in the world!” said Clapart. “And he will have altered very considerably!⁠—Why, you don’t know your own boy; he is a braggart, a liar, lazy, incapable⁠—”

“Supposing you were to go to fetch Poiret,” said the hapless mother, struck to the heart by the diatribe she had brought down on her own head.

“A boy who never took a prize at school!” added Clapart.

In the eyes of the commoner sort, bringing home prizes from school is positive proof of future success in life.

“Did you ever take a prize?” retorted his wife. “And Oscar got the fourth accessit in philosophy?”

This speech reduced Clapart to silence for a moment.

“And besides,” he presently went on, “Madame Moreau must love him as she loves a nail⁠—you know where; she will try to set her husband against him.⁠—Oscar steward at Presles! Why, he must understand land-surveying and agriculture⁠—”

“He can learn.”

“He! Never! I bet you that if he got a place there he would not be in it a week before he had done something clumsy, and was packed off by the Comte de Sérizy⁠—”

“Good heavens! How can you be so vicious about the future prospects of a poor boy, full of good points, as sweet as an angel, and incapable of doing an ill turn to any living soul?”

At this moment the cracking of a post-boy’s whip and the clatter of a chaise at top speed, with the hoofs of horses pulled up sharply at the outer gate, had roused the whole street. Clapart, hearing every window flung open, went out on the landing.

“Oscar, sent back by post!” cried he in a tone in which his satisfaction gave way to genuine alarm.

“Good God! what can have happened?” said the poor mother, trembling as a leaf is shaken by an autumn wind.

Brochon came upstairs, followed by Oscar and Poiret.

“Good heavens, what has happened?” repeated she, appealing to the groom.

“I don’t know, but Monsieur Moreau is no longer steward of Presles, and they say it is your son’s doing, and monseigneur has ordered him home again.⁠—However, here is a letter from poor Monsieur Moreau, who is so altered, madame, it is dreadful to see.”

“Clapart, a glass of wine for the post-boy, and one for monsieur,” said his wife, who dropped into an armchair and read the terrible letter. “Oscar,” she went on, dragging herself to her bed, “you want to kill your mother!⁠—After all I said to you this morning⁠—” But Madame Clapart did not finish her sentence; she fainted with misery.

Oscar remained standing, speechless. Madame Clapart, as she recovered her senses, heard her husband saying to the boy as he shook him by the arm:

“Will you speak?”

“Go to bed at once, sir,” said she to her son. “And leave him in peace, Monsieur Clapart; do not drive him out of his wits, for he is dreadfully altered!”

Oscar did not hear his mother’s remark; he had made for bed the instant he was told.

Those who have any recollection of their own boyhood will not be surprised to hear that, after a day so full of events and agitations, Oscar slept the sleep of the just in spite of the enormity of his sins. Nay, next day he did not find the whole face of nature so much changed as he expected, and was astonished to find that he was hungry, after regarding himself the day before as unworthy to live. He had suffered only in mind, and at that age mental impressions succeed each other so rapidly that each wipes out the last, however deep it may have seemed.

Hence corporal punishment, though philanthropists have made a strong stand against it of late years, is in some cases necessary for children; also, it is perfectly natural, for Nature herself has no other means but the infliction of pain to produce a lasting impression of her lessons. If to give weight to the shame, unhappily too transient, which had overwhelmed Oscar, the steward had given him a sound thrashing, the lesson might have been effectual. The discernment needed for the proper infliction of such corrections is the chief argument against their use; for Nature never makes a mistake, while the teacher must often blunder.

Madame Clapart took care to send her husband out next morning to have her son to herself. She was in a pitiable condition. Her eyes red with weeping, her face worn by a sleepless night, her voice broken; everything in her seemed to sue for mercy by the signs of such grief as she could not have endured a second time. When Oscar entered the room, she beckoned to him to sit down by her, and in a mild but feeling voice reminded him of all the kindness done them by the steward of Presles. She explained to Oscar that for the last six years especially she had lived on Moreau’s ingenious charity. Monsieur Clapart’s appointment, which they owed, no less than Oscar’s scholarship, to the Comte de Sérizy, he would some day cease to hold. Clapart could not claim a pension, not having served long enough either in the Treasury or the city to ask for one. And when Monsieur Clapart should be shelved, what was to become of them?

“I,” she said, “by becoming a sick-nurse or taking a place as housekeeper in some gentleman’s house, could make my living and keep Monsieur Clapart; but what would become of you? You have no fortune, and you must work for your living. There are but four openings for lads like you⁠—trade, the civil service, the liberal professions, and military service. A young man who has no capital must contribute faithful service and brains; but great discretion is needed in business, and your behavior yesterday makes your success very doubtful. For an official career you have to begin, for years perhaps, as a supernumerary, and need interest to back you; and you have alienated the only protector we ever had⁠—a man high in power. And besides, even if you were blest with the exceptional gifts which enable a young man to rise rapidly, either in business or in an official position, where are we to find the money for food and clothing while you are learning your work?”

And here his mother, like all women, went off into wordy lamentations. What could she do now that she was deprived of the gifts of produce which Moreau was able to send her while managing Presles? Oscar had overthrown his best friend.

Next to trade and office work, of which her son need not even think, came the legal profession as a notary, a pleader, an attorney, or an usher. But then he must study law for three years at least, and pay heavy fees for his admission, his examinations, his theses, and diploma; the number of competitors was so great, that superior talent was indispensable, and how was he to live? That was the constantly recurring question.

“Oscar,” she said in conclusion, “all my pride, all my life were centered in you. I could bear to look forward to an old age of poverty, for I kept my eyes on you; I saw you entering on a prosperous career, and succeeding in it. That hope has given me courage to endure the privations I have gone through during the last six years to keep you at school, for it has cost seven or eight hundred francs a year besides the half-scholarship. Now that my hopes are crushed, I dread to think of your future fate. I must not spend a sou of Monsieur Clapart’s salary on my own son.

“What do you propose to do. You are not a good enough mathematician to pass into a specialist college; and, besides, where could I find the three thousand francs a year for your training?⁠—This is life, my dear child! Well, you are eighteen, and a strong lad⁠—enlist as a soldier; it is the only way you can make a living.”

Oscar as yet knew nothing of life. Like all boys who have been brought up in ignorance of the poverty at home, he had no idea of the need to work for his living; the word “trade” conveyed no idea to his mind; and the words “Government office” did not mean much, for he knew nothing of the work. He listened with a look of submission, which he tried to make penitential, but his mother’s remonstrances were lost in air. However, at the idea of being a soldier, and on seeing the tears in his mother’s eyes, the boy too was ready to weep. As soon as Madame Clapart saw the drops on her boy’s cheeks, she was quite disarmed; and, like all mothers in a similar position, she fell back on the generalities which wind up this sort of attack, in which they suffer all their own sorrows and their children’s at the same time.

“Come, Oscar, promise me to be more cautious for the future, not to blurt out whatever comes uppermost, to moderate your absurd conceit⁠—” and so on.

Oscar was ready to promise all his mother asked, and pressing him gently to her heart, Madame Clapart ended by embracing him to comfort him for the scolding he had had.

“Now,” said she, “you will listen to your mother and follow her advice, for a mother can give her son none but good advice.⁠—We will go and see your uncle Cardot. He is our last hope. Cardot owed a great deal to your father, who, by allowing him to marry his sister, with what was then an immense marriage portion, enabled him to make a large fortune in silk. I fancy he would place you with Monsieur Camusot, his son-in-law and successor in the Rue des Bourdonnais.

“Still, your uncle Cardot has four children of his own. He made over his shop, the Cocon d’Or, to his eldest daughter, Madame Camusot. Though Cardot has millions, there are the four children, by two wives, and he hardly knows of our existence. Marianne, his second girl, married Monsieur Protez, of Protez and Chiffreville. He paid four hundred thousand francs to put his eldest son in business as a notary; and he has just invested for his second son Joseph as a partner in the business of Matifat, drug-importers. Thus your uncle Cardot may very well not choose to be troubled about you, whom he sees but four times a year. He has never been to call on me here; but he could come to see me when I was in Madame Mère’s household, to be allowed to supply silks to their Imperial Highnesses, and the Emperor, and the Grandees at Court.⁠—And now the Camusots are Ultras! Camusot’s eldest son, by his first wife, married the daughter of a gentleman usher to the King! Well, when the world stoops it grows hunchbacked. And, after all, it is a good business; the Cocon d’Or has the custom of the Court under the Bourbons as it had under the Emperor.

“Tomorrow we will go to see your uncle Cardot, and I hope you will contrive to behave; for, as I tell you, in him is our last hope.”

Monsieur Jean Jérôme Séverin Cardot had lost his second wife six years since⁠—Mademoiselle Husson, on whom, in the days of his glory, the contractor had bestowed a marriage portion of a hundred thousand francs in hard cash. Cardot, the head-clerk of the Cocon d’Or, one of the old-established Paris houses, had bought the business in 1793 when its owners were ruined by the maximum, and Mademoiselle Husson’s money to back him had enabled him to make an almost colossal fortune in ten years. To provide handsomely for his children, he had very ingeniously invested three hundred thousand francs in annuities for himself and his wife, which brought him in thirty thousand francs a year. The rest of his capital he divided into three portions of four hundred thousand francs for his younger children, and the shop was taken as representing that sum by Camusot when he married the eldest girl. Thus the old fellow, now nearly seventy, could dispose of his thirty thousand francs a year without damaging his children’s interests; they were all well married, and no avaricious hopes could interfere with their filial affection.

Uncle Cardot lived at Belleville in one of the first houses just above la Courtille. He rented a first floor, whence there was a fine view over the Seine valley, an apartment for which he paid a thousand francs a year, facing south, with the exclusive enjoyment of a large garden; thus he never troubled himself about the three or four other families inhabiting the spacious country house. Secure, by a long lease, of ending his days there, he lived rather shabbily, waited on by his old cook and by a maid who had been attached to his late wife, both of whom looked forward to an annuity of some six hundred francs at his death, and consequently did not rob him. These two women took incredible care of their master, and with all the more devotion since no one could be less fractious or fidgety than he.

The rooms, furnished by the late Madame Cardot, had remained unaltered for six years, and the old man was quite content; he did not spend a thousand crowns a year there, for he dined out in Paris five days a week, and came home at midnight in a private fly that he took at the Barrière de la Courtille. They had hardly anything to do beyond providing him with breakfast. The old man breakfasted at eleven o’clock, then he dressed and scented himself and went to Paris. A man usually gives notice when he means to dine out; Monsieur Cardot gave notice when he was to dine at home.

This little old gentleman, plump, rosy, square, and hearty, was always as neat as a pin, as the saying goes, that is to say, always in black silk stockings, corded silk knee-breeches, a white marcella waistcoat, dazzlingly white linen, and a dark blue coat; he wore violet silk gloves, gold buckles to his shoes, and breeches, a touch of powder on his hair, and a small queue tied with black ribbon. His face was noticeable for the thick, bushy eyebrows, beneath which sparkled his gray eyes, and a large squarely-cut nose that made him look like some venerable prebendary. This countenance did not belie the man. Old Cardot was, in fact, one of the race of frisky Gérontes who are disappearing day by day, and who played the part of Turcaret in all the romances and comedies of the eighteenth century. Uncle Cardot would speak to a woman as “Lady fair”; he would take home any woman in a coach who had no other protector; he was “theirs to command,” to use his own expression, with a chivalrous flourish. His calm face and snowy hair were the adjuncts of an old age wholly devoted to pleasure. Among men he boldly professed Epicureanism, and allowed himself rather a broad style of jokes. He had made no objection when his son-in-law Camusot attached himself to Coralie, the fascinating actress, for he was, in secret, the Maecenas of Mademoiselle Florentine, première danseuse at the Gaîté theatre.

Still, nothing appeared on the surface, or in his evident conduct, to tell tales of these opinions and this mode of life. Uncle Cardot, grave and polite, was supposed to be almost cold, such a display did he make of the proprieties, and even a bigot would have called him a hypocrite. This worthy gentleman particularly detested the priesthood, he was one of the large body of silly people who subscribe to the Constitutionnel, and was much exercised about the refusal of rights of burial. He adored Voltaire, though his preference as a matter of taste was for Piron, Verdé, and Collé. Of course, he admired Béranger, of whom he spoke ingeniously as the high priest of the religion of Lisette. His daughters, Madame Camusot and Madame Protez, and his two sons would indeed have been knocked flat, to use a vulgar phrase, if anyone had told them what their father meant by singing “La Mère Godichon.”

This shrewd old man had never told his children of his annuity; and they, seeing him live so poorly, all believed that he had stripped himself of his fortune for them, and overwhelmed him with care and affection. And he would sometimes say to his sons, “Do not lose your money, for I have none to leave you.” Camusot, who was a man after his own heart, and whom he liked well enough to allow him to join his little parties, was the only one who knew of his annuity of thirty thousand francs. Camusot highly applauded the old fellow’s philosophy, thinking that after providing so liberally for his children and doing his duty so thoroughly, he had a right to end his days jovially.

“You see, my dear fellow,” the old master of the Cocon d’Or would say to his son-in-law, “I might have married again, no doubt, and a young wife would have had children.⁠—Oh, yes, I should have had children, I was at an age when men always have children.⁠—Well, Florentine does not cost me so much as a wife, she never bores me, she will not plague me with children, and will not make a hole in your fortune.” And Camusot discovered in old Cardot an admirable feeling for the Family, regarding him as a perfect father-in-law. “He succeeds,” he would say, “in reconciling the interests of his children with the pleasures it is natural to indulge in in old age after having gone through all anxieties of business.”

Neither the Cardots, nor the Camusots, nor the Protez suspected what the existence was of their old aunt Madame Clapart. Their communications had always been restricted to sending formal letters on the occasions of a death or a marriage, and visiting cards on New Year’s Day. Madame Clapart was too proud to sacrifice her feelings for anything but her Oscar’s interests, and acted under the influence of her regard for Moreau, the only person who had remained faithful to her in misfortune. She had never wearied old Cardot by her presence or her importunities, but she had clung to him as to a hope. She called on him once a quarter, and talked to him of Oscar Husson, the nephew of the late respected Madame Cardot, taking the lad to see Uncle Cardot three times a year, in the holidays. On each occasion the old man took Oscar to dine at the Cadran bleu (the Blue Dial), and to the Gaîté in the evening, taking him home afterwards to the Rue de la Cerisaie. On one occasion, after giving him a new suit of clothes, he had made him a present of the silver mug and spoon and fork required as part of every schoolboy’s equipment.

Oscar’s mother had tried to convince the old man that Oscar was very fond of him, and she was always talking of the silver mug and spoon and the beautiful suit, of which nothing now survived but the waistcoat. But these little insinuating attentions did Oscar more harm than good with so cunning an old fox as Uncle Cardot. Old Cardot had not been devoted to his late lamented, a bony red-haired woman; also he knew the circumstances of the deceased Husson’s marriage to Oscar’s mother; and without looking down on her in any way, he knew that Oscar had been born after his father’s death, so his poor nephew seemed an absolute alien to the Cardot family. Unable to foresee disaster, Oscar’s mother had not made up for this lack of natural ties between the boy and his uncle, and had not succeeded in implanting in the old merchant any liking for her boy in his earliest youth. Like all women who are absorbed in the one idea of motherhood, Madame Clapart could not put herself in Uncle Cardot’s place; she thought he ought to be deeply interested in such a charming boy, whose name, too, was that of the late Madame Cardot.

“Monsieur, here is the mother of your nephew Oscar,” said the maid to Monsieur Cardot, who was airing himself in the garden before breakfast, after being shaved and having his head dressed by the barber.

“Good morning, lady fair,” said the old silk-merchant, bowing to Madame Clapart, while he wrapped his white quilted dressing-gown across him. “Ah, ha! your youngster is growing apace,” he added, pulling Oscar by the ear.

“He has finished his schooling, and he was very sorry that his dear uncle was not present at the distribution of prizes at the Collège Henri IV, for he was named. The name of Husson, of which, let us hope, he may prove worthy, was honorably mentioned.”

“The deuce it was!” said the little man, stopping short. He was walking with Madame Clapart and Oscar on a terrace where there were orange-trees, myrtles, and pomegranate shrubs. “And what did he get?”

“The fourth accessit in philosophy,” said the mother triumphantly.

“Oh, ho. He has some way to go yet to make up for lost time,” cried Uncle Cardot. “To end with an accessit⁠—is not the treasure of Peru.⁠—You will breakfast with me?” said he.

“We are at your commands,” replied Madame Clapart. “Oh, my dear Monsieur Cardot, what a comfort it is to a father and mother when their children make a good start in life. From that point of view, as indeed from every other,” she put in, correcting herself, “you are one of the happiest fathers I know. In the hands of your admirable son-in-law and your amiable daughter, the Cocon d’Or is still the best shop of the kind in Paris. Your eldest son has been for years as a notary at the head of the best known business in Paris, and he married a rich woman. Your youngest is a partner in a first-rate druggist’s business. And you have the sweetest grandchildren! You are the head of four flourishing families.⁠—Oscar, leave us; go and walk round the garden, and do not touch the flowers.”

“Why, he is eighteen!” exclaimed Uncle Cardot, smiling at this injunction, “as though Oscar was a child!”

“Alas! indeed he is, my dear Monsieur Cardot; and after bringing him up to that age neither crooked nor bandy, sound in mind and body, after sacrificing everything to give him an education, it would be hard indeed not to see him start in the way to fortune.”

“Well, Monsieur Moreau, who got you his half-scholarship at the Collège Henri IV, will start him in the right road,” said Uncle Cardot, hiding his hypocrisy under an affectation of bluntness.

“Monsieur Moreau may die,” said she. “Besides, he has quarreled beyond remedy with Monsieur le Comte de Sérizy, his patron.”

“The deuce he has! Listen, madame, I see what you are coming to⁠—”

“No, monsieur,” said Oscar’s mother, cutting the old man short; while he, out of respect for a “lady fair,” controlled the impulse of annoyance at being interrupted. “Alas! you can know nothing of the anguish of a mother who for seven years has been obliged to take six hundred francs a year out of her husband’s salary of eighteen hundred. Yes, monsieur, that is our whole income. So what can I do for my Oscar! Monsieur Clapart so intensely hates the poor boy, that I really cannot keep him at home. What can a poor woman do under such circumstances but come to consult the only relative her boy has under heaven?”

“You did quite right,” replied Monsieur Cardot, “you never said anything of all this before⁠—”

“Indeed, monsieur,” replied Madame Clapart with pride, “you are the last person to whom I would confess the depth of my poverty. It is all my own fault; I married a man whose incapacity is beyond belief. Oh! I am a most miserable woman.”

“Listen, madame,” said the little old man gravely. “Do not cry. I cannot tell you how much it pains me to see a fair lady in tears. After all, your boy’s name is Husson; and if the dear departed were alive, she would do something for the sake of her father’s and brother’s name⁠—”

“She truly loved her brother!” cried Oscar’s mother.

“But all my fortune is divided among my children, who have nothing further to expect from me,” the old man went on. “I divided the two million francs I had among them; I wished to see them happy in my lifetime. I kept nothing for myself but an annuity, and at my time of life a man clings to his habits.⁠—Do you know what you must do with this youngster?” said he, calling back Oscar, and taking him by the arm. “Put him to study law, I will pay for his matriculation and preliminary fees. Place him with an attorney; let him learn all the tricks of the trade; if he does well, and gets on and likes the work, and if I am still alive, each of my children will, when the time comes, lend him a quarter of the sum necessary to purchase a connection; I will stand surety for him. From now till then you have only to feed and clothe him; he will know some hard times, no doubt, but he will learn what life is. Why, why! I set out from Lyons with two double louis given me by my grandmother; I came to Paris on foot⁠—and here I am! Short commons are good for the health.⁠—Young man, with discretion, honesty, and hard work success is certain. It is a great pleasure to make your own fortune; and when a man has kept his teeth, he eats what he likes in his old age, singing ‘La Mère Godichon’ every now and then, as I do.⁠—Mark my words: Honesty, hard work, and discretion.”

“You hear, Oscar,” said his mother. “Your uncle has put in four words the sum-total of all my teaching, and you ought to stamp the last on your mind in letters of fire.”

“Oh, it is there!” replied Oscar.

“Well, then, thank your uncle; do you not understand that he is providing for you in the future? You may be an attorney in Paris.”

“He does not appreciate the splendor of his destiny,” said the old man, seeing Oscar’s bewildered face. “He has but just left school.⁠—Listen to me: I am not given to wasting words,” his uncle went on. “Remember that at your age honesty is only secured by resisting temptations, and in a great city like Paris you meet them at every turn. Live in a garret under your mother’s roof; go straight to your lecture, and from that to your office; work away morning, noon, and night, and study at home; be a second clerk by the time you are two-and-twenty, and a head-clerk at four-and-twenty. Get learning, and you are a made man. And then if you should not like that line of work, you might go into my son’s office as a notary and succeed him.⁠—So work, patience, honesty, and discretion⁠—these are your watchwords.”

“And God grant you may live another thirty years to see your fifth child realize all our expectations!” cried Madame Clapart, taking the old man’s hand and pressing it with a dignity worthy of her young days.

“Come, breakfast,” said the kind old man, leading Oscar in by the ear.

During the meal Uncle Cardot watched his nephew on the sly, and soon discovered that he knew nothing of life.

“Send him to see me now and then,” said he, as he took leave of her, with a nod to indicate Oscar. “I will lick him into shape.”

This visit soothed the poor woman’s worst grief, for she had not looked for such a happy result. For a fortnight she took Oscar out walking, watched over him almost tyrannically, and thus time went on till the end of October.

One morning Oscar saw the terrible steward walk in to find the wretched party in the Rue de la Cerisaie breakfasting off a salad of herring and lettuce, with a cup of milk to wash it down.

“We have settled in Paris, but we do not live as we did at Presles,” said Moreau, who intended thus to make Madame Clapart aware of the change in their circumstances, brought about by Oscar’s misdemeanor. “But I shall not often be in town. I have gone into partnership with old Léger and old Margueron of Beaumont. We are land agents, and we began by buying the estate of Persan. I am the head of the firm, which has got together a million of francs, for I have borrowed on my property. When I find an opening, Père Léger and I go into the matter, and my partners each take a quarter and I half of the profits, for I have all the trouble; I shall always be on the road.

“My wife lives in Paris very quietly, in the Faubourg du Roule. When we have fairly started in business, and shall only be risking the interest on our money, if we are satisfied with Oscar, we may perhaps give him work.”

“Well, after all, my friend, my unlucky boy’s blunder will no doubt turn out to be the cause of your making a fine fortune, for you really were wasting your talents and energy at Presles.” Madame Clapart then told the story of her visit to Uncle Cardot, to show Moreau that she and her son might be no further expense to them.

“The old man is quite right,” said the ex-steward. “Oscar must be kept to his work with a hand of iron, and he will no doubt make a notary or an attorney. But we must not wander from the line traced out for him.⁠—Ah! I know the man you want. The custom of an estate agent is valuable. I have been told of an attorney who has bought a practice without any connection. He is a young man; but as stiff as an iron bar, a tremendous worker, a perfect horse for energy and go; his name is Desroches. I will offer him all our business on condition of his taking Oscar in hand. I will offer him a premium of nine hundred francs, of which I will pay three hundred; thus your son will cost you only six hundred, and I will recommend him strongly to his master. If the boy is ever to become a man, it will be under that iron rule, for he will come out a notary, a pleader, or an attorney.”

“Come, Oscar, thank Monsieur Moreau for his kindness; you stand there like a mummy. It is not every youth who blunders that is lucky enough to find friends to take an interest in him after being injured by him⁠—”

“The best way to make matters up with me,” said Moreau, taking Oscar’s hand, “is to work steadily and behave well.”

Ten days after this Oscar was introduced by Monsieur Moreau to Maître Desroches, attorney, lately established in the Rue de Béthisy, in spacious rooms at the end of a narrow court, at a relatively low rent. Desroches, a young man of six-and-twenty, the son of poor parents, austerely brought up by an excessively severe father, had himself known what it was to be in Oscar’s position; he therefore took an interest in him, but only in the way of which he was himself capable, with all the hardness of his character. The manner of this tall, lean young lawyer, with a dull complexion, and his hair cut short all over his head, sharp in his speech, keen-eyed, and gloomy though hasty, terrified poor Oscar.

“We work day and night here,” said the lawyer from the depths of his chair, and from behind a long table, on which papers were piled in alps. “Monsieur Moreau, we will not kill him, but he will have to go our pace.⁠—Monsieur Godeschal!” he called out.

Although it was Sunday, the head-clerk appeared with a pen in his hand.

“Monsieur Godeschal, this is the articled pupil of whom I spoke, and in whom Monsieur Moreau takes the greatest interest; he will dine with us, and sleep in the little attic next to your room. You must allow him exactly time enough to get to the law-schools and back, so that he has not five minutes to lose; see that he learns the Code, and does well at lecture; that is to say, give him law books to read up when he has done his school work. In short, he is to be under your immediate direction, and I will keep an eye on him. We want to turn him out what you are yourself⁠—a capital head-clerk by the time he is ready to be sworn in as an attorney.⁠—Go with Godeschal, my little friend; he will show you your room, and you can move into it.”

“You see Godeschal?” Desroches went on, addressing Moreau. “He is a youngster without a sou, like myself; he is Mariette’s brother, and she is saving for him, so that he may buy a connection ten years hence.⁠—All my clerks are youngsters, who have nothing to depend on but their ten fingers to make their fortune. And my five clerks and I work like any dozen of other men. In ten years I shall have the finest practice in Paris. We take a passionate interest here in our business and our clients, and that is beginning to be known. I got Godeschal from my greater brother in law, Derville; with him he was second clerk, and only for a fortnight; but we had made friends in that huge office.

“I give Godeschal a thousand francs a year, with board and lodging. The fellow is worth it to me; he is indefatigable! I like that boy! He managed to live on six hundred francs a year, as I did when I was a clerk. What I absolutely insist on is stainless honesty, and the man who can practice it in poverty is a man. The slightest failing on that score, and a clerk of mine goes!”

“Come, the boy is in a good school,” said Moreau.

For two whole years Oscar lived in the Rue de Béthisy, in a den of the law; for if ever this old-fashioned term could be applied to a lawyer’s office, it was to this of Desroches. Under his minute and strict supervision, he was kept so rigidly to hours and to work, that his life in the heart of Paris was like that of a monk.

At five in the morning, in all weathers, Godeschal woke. He went down to the office with Oscar, to save a fire, and they always found the “chief” up and at work. Oscar did the errands and prepared his schoolwork⁠—studies on an enormous scale. Godeschal, and often the chief himself, showed their pupil what authors to compare, and the difficulties to be met. Oscar never was allowed to pass from one chapter of the Code to the next till he had thoroughly mastered it, and had satisfied both Desroches and Godeschal, who put him through preliminary examinations, far longer and harder than those of the law schools.

On his return from the schools, where he did not spend much time, he resumed his seat in the office and worked again; sometimes he went into the Courts, and he was at the bidding of the merciless Godeschal till dinnertime. Dinner, which he shared with his masters, consisted of a large dish of meat, a dish of vegetables, and a salad; for dessert there was a bit of Gruyere cheese. After dinner, Godeschal and Oscar went back to the office, and worked there till the evening.

Once a month Oscar went to breakfast with his Uncle Cardot, and he spent the Sundays with his mother. Moreau from time to time, if he came to the office on business, would take the boy to dine at the Palais-Royal, and treat him to the play. Oscar had been so thoroughly snubbed by Godeschal and Desroches on the subject of his craving after fashion, that he had ceased to think about dress.

“A good clerk,” said Godeschal, “should have two black coats⁠—one old and one new⁠—black trousers, black stockings and shoes. Boots cost too much. You may have boots when you are an attorney. A clerk ought not to spend more than seven hundred francs in all. He should wear good, strong shirts of stout linen.⁠—Oh, when you start from zero to make a fortune, you must know how to limit yourself to what is strictly needful. Look at Monsieur Desroches! He did as we are doing, and you see he has succeeded.”

Godeschal practised what he preached. Professing the strictest principles of honor, reticence, and honesty, he acted on them without any display, as simply as he walked and breathed. It was the natural working of his soul, as walking and breathing are the working of certain organs.

Eighteen months after Oscar’s arrival, the second clerk had made, for the second time, a small mistake in the accounts of his little cashbox. Godeschal addressed him in the presence of all the clerks:

“My dear Gaudet, leave on your own account, that it may not be said that the chief turned you out. You are either inaccurate or careless, and neither of those faults is of any use here. The chief shall not know, and that is the best I can do for an old fellow-clerk.”

Thus, at the age of twenty, Oscar was third clerk in Maître Desroches’ office. Though he earned no salary yet, he was fed and lodged, for he did the work of a second clerk. Desroches employed two managing clerks, and the second clerk was overdone with work. By the time he had got through his second year at the schools, Oscar, who knew more than many a man who has taken out his license, did the work of the Courts very intelligently, and occasionally pleaded in chambers. In fact, Desroches and Godeschal were satisfied.

Still, though he had become almost sensible, he betrayed a love of pleasure and a desire to shine, which were only subdued by the stern discipline and incessant toil of the life he led. The estate agent, satisfied with the boy’s progress, then relaxed his strictness; and when, in the month of July 1825, Oscar passed his final examination, Moreau gave him enough money to buy some good clothes. Madame Clapart, very happy and proud of her son, prepared a magnificent outfit for the qualified attorney, the second clerk, as he was soon to be. In poor families a gift always takes the form of something useful.

When the Courts reopened in the month of November, Oscar took the second clerk’s room and his place, with a salary of eight hundred francs, board and lodging. And Uncle Cardot, who came privately to make inquiries about his nephew of Desroches, promised Madame Clapart that he would put Oscar in a position to buy a connection if he went on as he had begun.

In spite of such seeming wisdom, Oscar Husson was torn by many yearnings in the bottom of his soul. Sometimes he felt as if he must fly from a life so entirely opposed to his taste and character; a galley slave, he thought, was happier than he. Galled by his iron collar, he was sometimes tempted to run away when he compared himself with some well-dressed youth he met in the street. Now and then an impulse of folly with regard to women would surge up in him; and his resignation was only a part of his disgust of life. Kept steady by Godeschal’s example, he was dragged rather than led by his will to follow so thorny a path.

Godeschal, who watched Oscar, made it his rule not to put his ward in the way of temptation. The boy had usually no money, or so little that he could not run into excesses. During the last year the worthy Godeschal had five or six times taken Oscar out for some “lark,” paying the cost, for he perceived that the cord round this tethered kid’s neck must be loosened; and these excesses, as the austere head-clerk termed them, helped Oscar to endure life. He found little to amuse him at his uncle’s house, and still less at his mother’s, for she lived even more frugally than Desroches.

Moreau could not, like Godeschal, make himself familiar with Oscar, and it is probable that this true protector made Godeschal his deputy in initiating the poor boy into the many mysteries of life. Oscar, thus learning discretion, could at last appreciate the enormity of the blunder he had committed during his ill-starred journey in the coucou; still, as the greater part of his fancies were so far suppressed, the follies of youth might yet lead him astray. However, as by degrees he acquired knowledge of the world and its ways, his reason developed; and so long as Godeschal did not lose sight of him, Moreau hoped to train Madame Clapart’s son to a good end.

“How is he going on?” the estate agent asked on his return from a journey which had kept him away from Paris for some months.

“Still much too vain,” replied Godeschal. “You give him good clothes and fine linen, he wears shirt-frills like a stockbroker, and my gentleman goes walking in the Tuileries on Sundays in search of adventures. What can I say? He is young.⁠—He teases me to introduce him to my sister, in whose house he would meet a famous crew!⁠—actresses, dancers, dandies, men who are eating themselves out of house and home.⁠—He is not cut out for an attorney, I fear. Still, he does not speak badly; he might become a pleader. He could argue a case from a well-prepared brief.”

In November 1825, when Oscar Husson was made second clerk, and was preparing his thesis for taking out his license, a new fourth clerk came to Desroches’ office to fill up the gap made by Oscar’s promotion.

This fourth clerk, whose name was Frédéric Marest, was intended for the higher walks of the law, and was now ending his third year at the schools. From information received by the inquiring minds of the office, he was a handsome fellow of three-and-twenty, who had inherited about twelve thousand francs a year at the death of a bachelor uncle, and the son of a Madame Marest, the widow of a rich timber merchant. The future judge, filled with the laudable desire to know his business in its minutest details, placed himself under Desroches, intending to study procedure, so as to be fit to take the place of a managing clerk in two years’ time. His purpose was to go through his first stages as a pleader in Paris, so as to be fully prepared for an appointment, which, as a young man of wealth, he would certainly get. To see himself a public prosecutor, at the age of thirty, was the height of his ambition.

Though Frédéric Marest was the first cousin of Georges Marest, the practical joker of the journey to Presles, as young Husson knew this youth only by his first name, as Georges, the name of Frédéric Marest had no suggestions for him.

“Gentlemen,” said Godeschal at breakfast, addressing all his underlings, “I have to announce the advent of a new student in law; and as he is very rich, we shall, I hope, make him pay his footing handsomely.”

“Bring out the Book,” cried Oscar to the youngest clerk, “and let us be serious, pray.”

The boy clambered like a squirrel along the pigeonholes to reach a volume lying on the top shelf, so as to collect all the dust.

“It is finely colored!” said the lad, holding it up.

We must now explain the perennial pleasantry which at that time gave rise to the existence of such a book in almost every lawyer’s office. An old saying of the eighteenth century⁠—“Clerks only breakfast, farmers generally dine, and lords sup”⁠—is still true, as regards the faculty of law, of every man who has spent two or three years studying procedure under an attorney, or the technicalities of a notary’s business under some master of that branch. In the life of a lawyer’s clerk work is so unremitting, that pleasure is enjoyed all the more keenly for its rarity, and a practical joke especially is relished with rapture. This, indeed, is what explains up to a certain point Georges Marest’s behavior in Pierrotin’s chaise. The gloomiest of law-clerks is always a prey to the craving for farcical buffoonery. The instinct with which a practical joke or an occasion for fooling is jumped at and utilized among law-clerks is marvelous to behold, and is found in no other class but among artists. The studio and the lawyer’s office are, in this respect, better than the stage.

Desroches, having started in an office without a connection, had, as it were, founded a new dynasty. This “Restoration” had interrupted the traditions of the office with regard to the footing of the newcomer. Desroches, indeed, settling in quarters where stamped paper had never yet been seen, had put in new tables, and clean new file-boxes of white millboard edged with blue. His staff consisted of clerks who had come from other offices with no connection between them, and thrown together by surprise as it were.

But Godeschal, who had learned his fence under Derville, was not the man to allow the precious tradition of the Bienvenue to be lost. The Bienvenue, or welcome, is the breakfast which every new pupil must give to the “old boys” of the office to which he is articled. Now, just at the time when Oscar joined the office, in the first six months of Desroches’ career, one winter afternoon when work was got through earlier than usual, and the clerks were warming themselves before going home, Godeschal hit upon the notion of concocting a sham register of the fasti and High Festivals of the Minions of the Law, a relic of great antiquity, saved from the storms of the Revolution, and handed down from the office of the great Bordin, Attorney to the Châtelet, and the immediate predecessor of Sauvagnest, the attorney from whom Desroches had taken the office. The first thing was to find in some stationer’s old stock a ledger with paper bearing an eighteenth century watermark, and properly bound in parchment, in which to enter the decrees of the Council. Having discovered such a volume, it was tossed in the dust, in the ashpan, in the fireplace, in the kitchen; it was even left in what the clerks called the consulting-room; and it had acquired a tint of mildew that would have enchanted a bookworm, the cracks of primeval antiquity, and corners so worn that the mice might have nibbled them off. The edges were rubbed with infinite skill. The book being thus perfected, here are a few passages which will explain to the dullest the uses to which Desroches’ clerks devoted it, the first sixty pages being filled with sham reports of cases.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. So be it.

“Whereas, on this day the Festival of our Lady Saint Geneviève, patron saint of this good city of Paris, under whose protection the scribes and scriveners of this office have dwelt since the year of our Lord 1525, we, the undersigned clerks and scriveners of this office of Master Jerosme-Sebastien Bordin, successor here to the deceased Guerbet, who in his lifetime served as attorney to the Châtelet, have recognized the need for us to replace the register and archives of installations of clerks in this glorious office, being ourselves distinguished members of the Faculty of the Law, which former register is now filled with the roll and record of our well-beloved predecessors, and we have besought the keeper of the Palace archives to bestow it with those of other offices, and we have all attended High Mass in the parish church of Saint-Séverin to solemnize the opening of this our new register.

“In token whereof, we here sign and affix our names.

“Malin, Head-Clerk.

“Grevin, Second Clerk.

“Athanase Feret, Clerk.

“Jacques Huet, Clerk.

“Reginald de Saint-Jean-d’Angely, Clerk.

“Bedeau, Office Boy and Gutter-Jumper.

“In the year of our Lord 1787.

“Having attended Mass, we went in a body to la Courtille, and had a great breakfast, which lasted until seven in the morning.”

This was a miracle of caligraphy. An expert could have sworn that the writing dated from the eighteenth century. Then follow twenty-seven reports in full of “Welcome” breakfasts, the last dating from the fatal year 1792.

After a gap of fourteen years, the register reopened in 1806 with the appointment of Bordin to be attorney to the lower Court of the Seine. And this was the record of the re-constitution of the Kingdom of Basoche (the legal profession generally):⁠—

“God in His clemency has granted that in the midst of the storms which have devastated France, now a great Empire, the precious archives of the most illustrious office of Master Bordin should be preserved. And we, the undersigned clerks of the most honorable and most worshipful Master Bordin, do not hesitate to ascribe this their marvelous escape, when so many other title-deeds, charters, and letters patent have vanished, to the protection of Saint Geneviève, the patron saint of this office, as likewise to the reverence paid by the last of the attorneys of the old block to all ancient use and custom. And whereas we know not what share to ascribe to the Lady Saint Geneviève and what to Master Bordin in the working of this miracle, we have resolved to go to the Church of Saint Étienne-du-Mont, there to attend a mass to be said at the altar of that saintly shepherdess who sendeth us so many lambs to fleece, and to invite our chief and master to breakfast, in the hope that he may bear the charge thereof. And to this we set our hand.

“Oignard, Head-Clerk.

“Poidevin, Second Clerk.

“Proust, Clerk.

“Brignolet, Clerk.

“Derville, Clerk.

“Augusten Coret, Office Boy.

“At the office, this 10th day of November 1806.”

“At three o’clock of the afternoon of the next day, the undersigned, being the clerks of this office, record their gratitude to their very worshipful chief, who hath feasted them at the shop of one Rolland, a cook in the Rue du Hasard, on good wines of three districts, Bordeaux, Champagne, and Burgundy, and on meats of good savor, from four o’clock of the afternoon until half-past seven, with coffee, liqueurs, and ices galore. Yet hath the presence of the worshipful master hindered us from the singing of laudes in clerkly modes, nor hath any clerk overstepped the limits of pleasing levity, inasmuch as our worthy, worshipful, and generous master had promised to take up his clerks to see Talma in Britannicus at the Théâtre Français. Long may he nourish! May heaven shed blessings on our worshipful master! May he get a good price for this his glorious office! May rich clients come to his heart’s desire! May his bills of cost be paid in gold on the nail! May all our future masters be like him! May he be ever beloved of his clerks, even when he is no more!”

Next came thirty-three reports in due form of the receptions of clerks who had joined the office, distinguished by various hand-writings in different shades of ink, distinct phraseology, and different signatures, and containing such laudatory accounts of the good cheer and wines as seemed to prove that the reports were drawn up on the spot and inter pocula.

Finally, in the month of June, 1822, at the time when Desroches himself had taken the oaths, there was this page of businesslike prose:⁠—

“I, the undersigned François Claude Marie Godeschal, being called by Maître Desroches to fulfil the difficult duties of head-clerk in an office where there are as yet no clients, having heard from Maître Derville, whose chambers I have quitted, of the existence of certain famous archives of Basochian banquets and Festivals famous in the Courts, I besought our worshipful master to require them of his predecessor; for it was important to recover that document, which bore the date AD 1786, and was the sequel to the archives, deposited with those of the Courts of Law, of which the existence was certified by MM. Terrasse and Duclos, keepers of the said archives, going back to the year 1525, and giving historical details of the highest value as to the manners and cookery of the law-clerks in those days.

“This having been granted, the office was put in possession as at this time of these evidences of the worship constantly paid by our predecessors to the Dive Bouteille and to good cheer.

“Whereupon, for the edification of those that come after us, and to continue the sequence of time and cup, I have invited MM. Doublet, second clerk; Vassal, third clerk; Hérisson and Grandemain, assistant clerks; Dumets, office boy, to breakfast on Sunday next at the Cheval Rouge on the Quai Saint-Bernard, where we will celebrate the recovery of this volume containing the charter of our guzzlings.

“On this day, Sunday, June 27th, one dozen bottles of various wines were drunk and found excellent. Noteworthy, likewise, were two melons, pies au jus romanum, a fillet of beef, and a toast Agaricibus. Mademoiselle Mariette, the illustrious sister of the head-clerk, and leading lady at the Royal Academy of Music and Dancing, having given to the clerks of this office stalls for that evening’s performance, she is hereby to be remembered for her act of generosity. And it is furthermore resolved that the said clerks shall proceed in a body to return thanks to that noble damsel, and to assure her that on the occasion of her first lawsuit, if the Devil involves her in one, she shall pay no more than the bare costs; to which all set their hand.

“Godeschal was proclaimed the pride of his profession, and the best of good fellows. May the man who treats others so handsomely soon be treating for a business of his own!”

The document was spattered with wine-spots and with blots and flourishes like fireworks.

To give a complete idea of the stamp of truth impressed on this great work, it will suffice to extract the report of the reception supposed to have been provided by Oscar:⁠—

“Today, Monday, the 25th day of November 1822, after a meeting held yesterday in the Rue de la Cerisaie, hard by the Arsenal, at the house of Madame Clapart, the mother of the new pupil, by name Oscar Husson, we, the undersigned, declare that the breakfast far surpassed our expectations. It included radishes (red and black), gherkins, anchovies, butter, and olives as introductory hors-d’oeuvres; of a noble rich broth that bore witness to a mother’s care, inasmuch as we recognized in it a delicious flavor of fowl; and by the courtesy of the founder of the feast we were, in fact, informed that the trimmings of a handsome cold dish prepared by Madame Clapart had been judiciously added to the stock concocted at home with such care as is known only in private kitchens.

“Item, the aforementioned cold fowl, surrounded by a sea of jelly, the work of the aforenamed mother.

“Item, an ox-tongue, aux tomates, on which we proved ourselves by no means au-tomata.

“Item, a stew of pigeons of such flavor as led us to believe that angels had watched over the pot.

“Item, a dish of macaroni flanked by cups of chocolate custard.

“Item, dessert, consisting of eleven dishes, among which, in spite of the intoxication resulting from sixteen bottles of excellent wine, we discerned the flavor of an exquisitely and superlatively delicious preserve of peaches.

“The wines of Roussillon and of the Côte du Rhône quite outdid those of Champagne and Burgundy. A bottle of Maraschino, and one of Kirsch, finally, and in spite of delicious coffee, brought us to such a pitch of oenological rapture, that one of us⁠—namely, Master Hérisson⁠—found himself in the Bois de Boulogne when he believed he was still on the Boulevard du Temple; and that Jacquinaut, the gutter-jumper, aged fourteen, spoke to citizens’ wives of fifty-seven, taking them for women on the street; to which all set their hand.

“Now, in the statutes of our Order there is a law strictly observed, which is, that those who aspire to the benefits and honors of the profession of the law shall restrict the magnificence of their ‘welcome’ to the due proportion with their fortune, inasmuch as it is a matter of public notoriety that no man with a private income serves Themis, and that all clerks are kept short of cash by their fond parents; wherefore, it is with great admiration that we here record the munificence of Madame Clapart, widow after her first marriage of Monsieur Husson, the new licentiate’s father, and declare that it was worthy of the cheers we gave her at the dessert; to which all set their hand.”

This rigmarole had already taken in three newcomers, and three real breakfasts were duly recorded in this imposing volume.

On the day when a neophyte first made his appearance in the office, the boy always laid the archives on the desk in front of his seat, and the clerks chuckled as they watched the face of the new student while he read these grotesque passages. Each in turn, inter pocula, had been initiated into the secret of this practical joke, and the revelation, as may be supposed, filled them with the hope of mystifying other clerks in the future.

So, now, my readers can imagine the countenances of the four clerks and the boy, when Oscar, now in his turn the practical joker, uttered the words, “Bring out the Book.”

Ten minutes later, a handsome young man came in, well grown and pleasant looking, asked for Monsieur Desroches, and gave his name at once to Godeschal.

“I am Frédéric Marest,” said he, “and have come to fill the place of third clerk here.”

“Monsieur Husson,” said Godeschal, “show the gentleman his seat, and induct him into our ways of work.”

Next morning the new clerk found the Book lying on his writing-pad; but after reading the first pages, he only laughed, gave no invitation, and put the book aside on his desk.

“Gentlemen,” said he, as he was leaving at five o’clock, “I have a cousin who is managing-clerk to Maître Léopold Hannequin, the notary, and I will consult him as to what I should do to pay my footing.”

“This looks badly,” cried Godeschal. “Our sucking magistrate is no greenhorn.”

“Oh! we will lead him a life!” said Oscar.

Next afternoon, at about two o’clock, Oscar saw a visitor come in, and recognized in Hannequin’s head-clerk Georges Marest.

“Why, here is Ali Pasha’s friend!” said he, in an airy tone.

“What? you here, my lord, the Ambassador?” retorted Georges, remembering Oscar.

“Oh, ho! then you are old acquaintances?” said Godeschal to Georges.

“I believe you! We played the fool in company,” said Georges, “above two years ago.⁠—Yes, I left Crottat to go to Hannequin in consequence of that very affair.”

“What affair?” asked Godeschal.

“Oh, a mere nothing,” replied Georges, with a wink at Oscar. “We tried to make game of a Peer of France, and it was he who made us look foolish.⁠—And now, I hear you want to draw my cousin.”

“We do not draw anything,” said Oscar with dignity. “Here is our charter.” And he held out the famous volume at a page where sentence of excommunication was recorded against a refractory student, who had been fairly driven out of the office for stinginess in 1788.

“Still, I seem to smell game,” said Georges, “for here is the trail,” and he pointed to the farcical archives. “However, my cousin and I can afford it, and we will give you a feast such as you never had, and which will stimulate your imagination when recording it here.⁠—Tomorrow, Sunday, at the Rocher de Cancale, two o’clock. And I will take you afterwards to spend the evening with Madame la Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos, where we will gamble, and you will meet the elite of fashion. And so, gentlemen of the lower Court,” he went on, with the arrogance of a notary, “let us have your best behavior, and carry your wine like gentlemen of the Regency.”

“Hurrah!” cried the clerks like one man. “Bravo!⁠—Very well!⁠—Vivat!⁠—Long live the Marests!⁠—”

“Pontins,” added the boy (Les Marais Pontins⁠—the Pontine Marshes).

“What is up?” asked Desroches, coming out of his private room. “Ah! you are here, Georges,” said he to the visitor. “I know you, you are leading my clerks into mischief.” And he went back into his own room, calling Oscar.

“Here,” said he, opening his cashbox, “are five hundred francs; go to the Palace of Justice and get the judgment in the case of Vandenesse vs. Vandenesse out of the copying-clerk’s office; it must be sent in this evening if possible. I promised Simon a refresher of twenty francs; wait for the copy if it is not ready, and do not let yourself be put off. Derville is quite capable of putting a drag on our wheels if it will serve his client.⁠—Count Félix de Vandenesse is more influential than his brother the Ambassador, our client. So keep your eyes open, and if the least difficulty arises, come to me at once.”

Oscar set out, determined to distinguish himself in this little skirmish, the first job that had come to him since his promotion.

When Georges and Oscar were both gone, Godeschal tried to pump the new clerk as to what jest might lie, as he felt sure, under the name of the Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos; but Frédéric carried on his cousin’s joke with the coolness and gravity of a judge, and by his replies and his manner contrived to convey to all the clerks that the Marquise de las Florentinas was the widow of a Spanish grandee, whom his cousin was courting. Born in Mexico, and the daughter of a Creole, this wealthy young widow was remarkable for the free-and-easy demeanor characteristic of the women of the Tropics.

“ ‘She likes to laugh, She likes to drink, She likes to sing as we do,’ ” said he, quoting a famous song by Béranger. “And Georges,” he went on, “is very rich; he inherited a fortune from his father, who was a widower, and who left him eighteen thousand francs a year, which, with twelve thousand left to each of us by an uncle, make an income of thirty thousand francs. And he hopes to be Marquis de las Florentinas, for the young widow bears her title in her own right, and can confer it on her husband.”

Though the clerks remained very doubtful as to the Marquise, the prospect of a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale, and of a fashionable soirée, filled them with joy. They reserved their opinion as to the Spanish lady, to judge her without appeal after having seen her.

The Marquise de las Florentinas was, in fact, neither more nor less than Mademoiselle Agathe Florentine Cabirolle, leading danseuse at the Gaîté Theatre, at whose house Uncle Cardot “sang ‘La Mère Godichon.’ ” Within a year of the very reparable loss of the late Madame Cardot, the fortunate merchant met Florentine one evening coming out of Coulon’s dancing school. Dazzled by the beauty of this flower of the ballet⁠—Florentine was then but thirteen⁠—the retired shopkeeper followed her to the Rue Pastourelle, where he had the satisfaction of learning that the future divinity of the dance owed her existence to a humble doorkeeper. The mother and daughter, transplanted within a fortnight to the Rue de Crussol, there found themselves in modest but easy circumstances. So it was to this “Patron of the Arts,” to use a time-honored phrase, that the stage was indebted for the budding artist.

The generous Maecenas almost turned their simple brains by giving them mahogany furniture, curtains, carpets, and a well-fitted kitchen; he enabled them to keep a servant, and allowed them two hundred and fifty francs a month. Old Cardot, with his ailes de pigeon, to them seemed an angel, and was treated as a benefactor should be. This was the golden age of the old man’s passion.

For three years the singer of “La Mère Godichon” was so judicious as to keep Mademoiselle Cabirolle and her mother in this unpretentious house, close to the theatre; then, for love of the Terpsichorean art, he placed his protégée under Vestris. And, in 1820, he was so happy as to see Florentine dance her first steps in the ballet of a spectacular melodrama called The Ruins of Babylon. Florentine was now sixteen.

Soon after this first appearance Uncle Cardot was “an old hunks,” in the young lady’s estimation; however, as he had tact enough to understand that a dancer at the Gaîté Theatre must keep up a position, and raised her monthly allowance to five hundred francs a month, if he was no longer an angel, he was at least a friend for life, a second father. This was the age of silver.

Between 1820 and 1823 Florentine went through the experience which must come to every ballet-dancer of nineteen or twenty. Her friends were the famous opera-singers Mariette and Tullia; Florine, and poor Coralie, so early snatched from Art, Love, and Camusot. And as little uncle Cardot himself was now five years older, he had drifted into the indulgence of that half-fatherly affection which old men feel for the young talents they have trained, and whose successes are theirs. Besides, how and where should a man of sixty-eight have formed such another attachment as this with Florentine, who knew his ways, and at whose house he could sing “La Mère Godichon” with his friends? So the little man found himself under a half matrimonial yoke of irresistible weight. This was the age of brass.

In the course of the five years of the ages of gold and of silver, Cardot had saved ninety thousand francs. The old man had had much experience; he foresaw that by the time he was seventy Florentine would be of age; she would probably come out on the Opera stage, and, of course, expect the luxury and splendor of a leading lady. Only a few days before the evening now to be described, Cardot had spent forty-five thousand francs in establishing his Florentine in a suitable style, and had taken for her the apartment where the now dead Coralie had been the joy of Camusot. In Paris, apartments and houses, like streets, have a destiny.

Glorying in magnificent plate, the leading lady of the Gaîté gave handsome dinners, spent three hundred francs a month on dress, never went out but in a private fly, and kept a maid, a cook, and a page. What she aimed at indeed was a command to dance at the opera. The Cocon d’Or laid its handsomest products at the feet of its former master to please Mademoiselle Cabirolle, known as Florentine, just as, three years since, it had gratified every wish of Coralie’s; but still without the knowledge of uncle Cardot’s daughter, for the father and his son-in-law had always agreed that decorum must be respected at home. Madame Camusot knew nothing of her husband’s extravagance or her father’s habits.

Now, after being the master for seven years, Cardot felt himself in tow of a pilot whose power of caprice was unlimited. But the unhappy old fellow was in love. Florentine alone must close his eyes, and he meant to leave her a hundred thousand francs. The age of iron had begun.

Georges Marest, handsome, young, and rich, with thirty thousand francs a year, was paying court to Florentine. Every dancer is by way of loving somebody as her protector loves her, and having a young man to escort her out walking or driving, and arrange excursions into the country. And, however disinterested, the affections of a leading lady are always a luxury, costing the happy object of her choice some little trifle. Dinners at the best restaurants, boxes at the play, carriages for driving in the environs of Paris, and choice wines lavishly consumed⁠—for ballet-dancers live now like the athletes of antiquity.

Georges, in short, amused himself as young men do who suddenly find themselves independent of paternal discipline; and his uncle’s death, almost doubling his income, enlarged his ideas. So long as he had but the eighteen thousand francs a year left him by his parents he intended to be a notary; but, as his cousin remarked to Desroches’ clerks, a man would be a noodle to start in a profession with as much money as others have when they give it up. So the retiring law-clerk was celebrating his first day of freedom by this breakfast, which was also to pay his cousin’s footing.

Frédéric, more prudent than Georges, persisted in his legal career.

As a fine young fellow like Georges might very well marry a rich Creole, and the Marquis de las Florentinas y Cabirolos might very well in the decline of life⁠—as Frédéric hinted to his new companions⁠—have preferred to marry for beauty rather than for noble birth, the clerks of Desroches’ office⁠—all belonging to impecunious families, and having no acquaintance with the fashionable world⁠—got themselves up in their Sunday clothes, all impatience to see the Mexican Marquesa de las Florentinas y Cabirolos.

“What good luck,” said Oscar to Godeschal as he dressed in the morning, “that I should have just ordered a new coat, waistcoat, and trousers, and a pair of boots, and that my precious mother should have given me a new outfit on my promotion to be second clerk. I have six fine shirts with frills out of the dozen she gave me. We will make a good show! Oh! if only one of us could carry off the Marquise from that Georges Marest!”

“A pretty thing for a clerk in Maître Desroches’ office!” cried Godeschal. “Will you never be cured of your vanity⁠—brat!”

“Oh, monsieur,” said Madame Clapart, who had just come in to bring her son some ties, and heard the managing clerk’s remarks, “would to God that Oscar would follow your good advice! It is what I am always saying to him, ‘Imitate Monsieur Godeschal, take his advice,’ is what I say.”

“He is getting on, madame,” said Godeschal, “but he must not often be so clumsy as he was yesterday, or he will lose his place in the master’s good graces. Maître Desroches cannot stand a man who is beaten. He sent your son on his first errand yesterday, to fetch away the copy of the judgment delivered in a will case, which two brothers, men of high rank, are fighting against each other, and Oscar allowed himself to be circumvented. The master was furious. It was all I could do to set things straight by going at six this morning to find the copying-clerk, and I made him promise to let me have the judgment in black and white by seven tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, Godeschal,” cried Oscar, going up to his superior and grasping his hand, “you are a true friend!”

“Yes, monsieur,” said Madame Clapart, “it is a happy thing for a mother to feel that her son has such a friend as you, and you may believe that my gratitude will end only with my life. Oscar, beware of this Georges Marest; he has already been the cause of your first misfortune in life.”

“How was that?” asked Godeschal.

The too-confiding mother briefly told the head-clerk the story of poor Oscar’s adventure in Pierrotin’s chaise.

“And I am certain,” added Godeschal, “that the humbug has planned some trick on us this evening. I shall not go to the Marquise de las Florentinas. My sister needs my help in drawing up a fresh engagement, so I shall leave you at dessert. But be on your guard, Oscar. Perhaps they will make you gamble, and Desroches’ office must not make a poor mouth. Here, you can stake for us both; here are a hundred francs,” said the kind fellow, giving the money to Oscar, whose purse had been drained by the tailor and bootmaker. “Be careful; do not dream of playing beyond the hundred francs; do not let play or wine go to your head. By the Mass! even a second clerk has a position to respect; he must not play on promissory paper, nor overstep a due limit in anything. When a man is second clerk he must remember that he will presently be an attorney. So not to drink, not to play high, and to be moderate in all things, must be your rule of conduct. Above all, be in by midnight, for you must be at the Courts by seven to fetch away the copy of that judgment. There is no law against some fun, but business holds the first place.”

“Do you hear, Oscar?” said Madame Clapart. “And see how indulgent Monsieur Godeschal is, and how he combines the enjoyments of youth with the demands of duty.”

Madame Clapart, seeing the tailor and bootmaker waiting for Oscar, remained behind a moment with Godeschal to return the hundred francs he had just lent the boy.

“A mother’s blessing be on you, monsieur, and on all you do,” said she.

The mother had the supreme delight of seeing her boy well dressed; she had bought him a gold watch, purchased out of her savings, as a reward for his good conduct.

“You are on the list for the conscription next week,” said she, “and as it was necessary to be prepared in case your number should be drawn, I went to see your uncle Cardot; he is delighted at your being so high up at the age of twenty, and at your success in the examinations at the law schools, so he has promised to find the money for a substitute. Do you not yourself feel some satisfaction in finding good conduct so well rewarded? If you still have to put up with some privations, think of the joy of being able to purchase a connection in only five years! And remember too, dear boy, how happy you make your mother.”

Oscar’s face, thinned down a little by hard study, had developed into a countenance to which habits of business had given a look of gravity. He had done growing, and had a beard; in short, from a boy he had become a man. His mother could not but admire him, and she kissed him fondly, saying:

“Yes, enjoy yourself, but remember Monsieur Godeschal’s advice.⁠—By the way, I was forgetting: here is a present from our friend Moreau⁠—a pocketbook.”

“The very thing I want, for the chief gave me five hundred francs to pay for that confounded judgment in Vandenesse, and I did not want to leave them in my room.”

“Are you carrying the money about with you?” said his mother in alarm. “Supposing you were to lose such a sum of money! Would you not do better to leave it with Monsieur Godeschal?”

“Godeschal!” cried Oscar, thinking his mother’s idea admirable.

But Godeschal, like all clerks on Sunday, had his day to himself from ten o’clock, and was already gone.

When his mother had left, Oscar went out to lounge on the Boulevards till it was time for the breakfast. How could he help airing those resplendent clothes, that he wore with such pride, and the satisfaction that every man will understand who began life in narrow circumstances? A neat double-breasted blue cashmere waistcoat, black kerseymere trousers made with pleats, a well-fitting black coat, and a cane with a silver-gilt knob, bought out of his little savings, were the occasion of very natural pleasure to the poor boy, who remembered the clothes he had worn on the occasion of that journey to Presles, and the effect produced on his mind by Georges.

Oscar looked forward to a day of perfect bliss; he was to see the world of fashion for the first time that evening! And it must be admitted that to a lawyer’s clerk starved of pleasure, who had for long been craving for a debauch, the sudden play of the senses was enough to obliterate the wise counsels of Godeschal and his mother. To the shame of the young be it said, good advice and warnings are never to seek. Apart from the morning’s lecture, Oscar felt an instinctive dislike of Georges; he was humiliated in the presence of a man who had witnessed the scene in the drawing-room at Presles, when Moreau had dragged him to the Count’s feet.

The moral sphere has its laws; and we are always punished if we ignore them. One, especially, the very beasts obey invariably and without delay. It is that which bids us fly from anyone who has once injured us, voluntarily or involuntarily, intentionally or no. The being who has brought woe or discomfort on us is always odious. Whatever his rank, however near be the ties of affection, we must part. He is the emissary of our evil genius. Though Christian theory is opposed to such conduct, obedience to this inexorable law is essentially social and preservative. James II’s daughter, who sat on her father’s throne, must have inflicted more than one wound on him before her usurpation. Judas must certainly have given Jesus some mortal thrust or ever he betrayed Him. There is within us a second sight, a mind’s eye, which foresees disasters; and the repugnance we feel to the fateful being is the consequence of this prophetic sense. Though religion may command us to resist it, distrust remains and its voice should be listened to.

Could Oscar, at the age of twenty, be so prudent? Alas! When, at two o’clock, Oscar went into the room of the Rocher de Cancale, where he found three guests besides his fellow-clerks⁠—to wit, an old dragoon captain named Giroudeau; Finot, a journalist who might enable Florentine to get an engagement at the opera; and du Bruel, an author and friend of Tullia’s, one of Mariette’s rivals at the opera⁠—the junior felt his hostility melt away under the first handshaking, the first flow of talk among young men, as they sat at a table handsomely laid for twelve. And indeed Georges was charming to Oscar.

“You are,” said he, “following a diplomatic career, but in private concerns; for what is the difference between an ambassador and an attorney? Merely that which divides a nation from an individual. Ambassadors are the attorneys of a people.⁠—If I can ever be of any use to you, depend on me.”

“My word! I may tell you now,” said Oscar, “you were the cause of a terrible catastrophe for me.”

“Pooh!” said Georges, after listening to the history of the lad’s tribulations. “It was Monsieur de Sérizy who behaved badly. His wife?⁠—I would not have her at a gift. And although the Count is Minister of State and Peer of France, I would not be in his red skin! He is a small-minded man, and I can afford to despise him now.”

Oscar listened with pleasure to Georges’ ironies on the Comte de Sérizy, for they seemed to diminish the gravity of his own fault, and he threw himself into the young man’s spirit as he predicted that overthrow of the nobility of which the citizen class then had visions, to be realized in 1830.

They sat down at half-past three; dessert was not on the table before eight. Each course of dishes lasted two hours. None but law-clerks can eat so steadily! Digestions of eighteen and twenty are inexplicable to the medical faculty. The wine was worthy of Borrel, who had at that time succeeded the illustrious Balaine, the creator of the very best restaurant in Paris⁠—and that is to say in the world⁠—for refined and perfect cookery.

A full report of this Belshazzar’s feast was drawn up at dessert, beginning with⁠—Inter pocula aurea restauranti, qui vulgo dicitur Rupes Cancali: and from this introduction the rapturous record may be imagined which was added to this Golden Book of the High Festivals of the Law.

Godeschal disappeared after signing his name, leaving the eleven feasters, prompted by the old captain of the Imperial Dragoons, to devote themselves to the wine, the liqueurs, and the toasts, over a dessert of pyramids of sweets and fruits like the pyramids of Thebes. By half-past ten the “boy” of the office was in a state which necessitated his removal; Georges packed him into a cab, gave the driver his mother’s address, and paid his fare. Then the ten remaining guests, as drunk as Pitt and Dundas, talked of going on foot by the Boulevards, the night being very fine, as far as the residence of the Marquise, where, at a little before midnight, they would find a brilliant company. The whole party longed to fill their lungs with fresh air; but excepting Georges, Giroudeau, Finot, and du Bruel, all accustomed to Parisian orgies, no one could walk. So Georges sent for three open carriages from a job-master’s stables, and took the whole party for an airing on the outer Boulevards for an hour, from Montmartre to the Barrière du Trône, and back by Bercy, the quays, and the Boulevards to the Rue de Vendôme.

The youngsters were still floating in the paradise of fancy to which intoxication transports boys, when their entertainer led them into Florentine’s rooms. Here sat a dazzling assembly of the queens of the stage, who, at a hint, no doubt, from Frédéric, amused themselves by aping the manners of fine ladies. Ices were handed round, the chandeliers blazed with wax lights. Tullia’s footman, with those of Madame du Val-Noble and Florine, all in gaudy livery, carried round sweetmeats on silver trays. The hangings, choice products of the looms of Lyons, and looped with gold cord, dazzled the eye. The flowers on the carpet suggested a garden-bed. Costly toys and curiosities glittered on all sides. At first, and in the obfuscated state to which Georges had brought them, the clerks, and Oscar in particular, believed in the genuineness of the Marquesa de las Florentinas y Cabirolos.

On four tables set out for play, gold pieces lay in glittering heaps. In the drawing-room the women were playing at Vingt-et-un, Nathan, the famous author, holding the deal. Thus, after being carried tipsy and half-asleep along the dimly-lighted Boulevards, the clerks woke to find themselves in Armida’s Palace. Oscar, on being introduced by Georges to the sham Marquise, stood dumbfounded, not recognizing the ballet-dancer from the Gaîté in an elegant dress cut aristocratically low at the neck and richly trimmed with lace⁠—a woman looking like a vignette in a keepsake, who received them with an air and manners that had no parallel in the experience or the imagination of a youth so strictly bred as he had been. After he had admired all the splendor of the rooms, the beautiful women who displayed themselves and who had vied with each other in dress for this occasion⁠—the inauguration of all this magnificence⁠—Florentine took Oscar by the hand and led him to the table where Vingt-et-un was going on.

“Come, let me introduce you to the handsome Marquise d’Anglade, one of my friends⁠—”

And she took the hapless Oscar up to pretty Fanny Beaupré, who, for the last two years, had filled poor Coralie’s place in Camusot’s affections. The young actress had just achieved a reputation in the part of a Marquise in a melodrama at the Porte-Saint-Martin, called la Famille d’Anglade, one of the successes of the day.

“Here, my dear,” said Florentine, “allow me to introduce to you a charming youth who can be your partner in the game.”

“Oh! that will be very nice!” replied the actress, with a fascinating smile, as she looked Oscar down from head to foot. “I am losing. We will go shares, if you like.”

“I am at your orders, Madame la Marquise,” said Oscar, taking a seat by her side.

“You shall stake,” said she, “and I will play. You will bring me luck. There, that is my last hundred francs⁠—” And the sham Marquise took out a purse of which the rings were studded with diamonds, and produced five gold pieces. Oscar brought out his hundred francs in five-franc pieces, already shamefaced at mingling the ignoble silver cartwheels with the gold coin. In ten rounds the actress had lost the two hundred francs.

“Come! this is stupid!” she exclaimed. “I will take the deal. We will still be partners?” she asked of Oscar.

Fanny Beaupré rose, and the lad, who, like her, was now the centre of attention to the whole table, dared not withdraw, saying that the devil alone was lodged in his purse. He was speechless, his tongue felt heavy and stuck to his palate.

“Lend me five hundred francs,” said the actress to the dancer.

Florentine brought her five hundred francs, which she borrowed of Georges, who had just won at écarté eight times running.

“Nathan has won twelve hundred francs,” said the actress to the clerk. “The dealer always wins; do not let us be made fools of,” she whispered in his ear.

Every man of feeling, of imagination, of spirit will understand that poor Oscar could not help opening his pocketbook and taking out the five hundred franc note. He looked at Nathan, the famous writer, who, in partnership with Florine, staked high against the dealer.

“Now then, boy, sweep it in!” cried Fanny Beaupré, signing to Oscar to take up two hundred francs that Florine and Nathan had lost.

The actress did not spare the losers her banter and jests. She enlivened the game by remarks of a character which Oscar thought strange; but delight stifled these reflections, for the first two deals brought in winnings of two thousand francs. Oscar longed to be suddenly taken ill and to fly, leaving his partner to her fate, but honor forbade it. Three more deals had carried away the profits. Oscar felt the cold sweat down his spine; he was quite sobered now. The last two rounds absorbed a thousand francs staked by the partners; Oscar felt thirsty, and drank off three glasses of iced punch.

The actress led him into an adjoining room, talking nonsense to divert him; but the sense of his error so completely overwhelmed Oscar, to whom Desroches’ face appeared like a vision in a dream, that he sank on to a splendid ottoman in a dark corner and hid his face in his handkerchief. He was fairly crying. Florentine detected him in this attitude, too sincere not to strike an actress; she hurried up to Oscar, pulled away the handkerchief, and seeing his tears led him into a boudoir.

“What is the matter, my boy?” said she.

To this voice, these words, this tone, Oscar, recognizing the motherliness of a courtesan’s kindness, replied:

“I have lost five hundred francs that my master gave me to pay tomorrow morning for a judgment; there is nothing for it but to throw myself into the river; I am disgraced.”

“How can you be so silly?” cried Florentine. “Stay where you are, I will bring you a thousand francs. Try to recover it all, but only risk five hundred francs, so as to keep your chief’s money. Georges plays a first-rate game at écarté; bet on him.”

Oscar, in his dreadful position, accepted the offer of the mistress of the house.

“Ah!” thought he, “none but a Marquise would be capable of such an action. Beautiful, noble, and immensely rich! Georges is a lucky dog!”

He received a thousand francs in gold from the hands of Florentine, and went to bet on the man who had played him this trick. The punters were pleased at the arrival of a new man, for they all, with the instinct of gamblers, went over to the side of Giroudeau, the old Imperial officer.

“Gentlemen,” said Georges, “you will be punished for your defection, for I am in luck.⁠—Come, Oscar; we will do for them.”

But Georges and his backer lost five games running. Having thrown away his thousand francs, Oscar, carried away by the gambling fever, insisted on holding the cards. As a result of the luck that often favors a beginner, he won; but Georges puzzled him with advice; he told him how to discard, and frequently snatched his hand from him, so that the conflict of two wills, two minds, spoiled the run of luck. In short, by three in the morning, after many turns of fortune and unhoped-for recoveries, still drinking punch, Oscar found himself possessed of no more than a hundred francs. He rose from the table, his brain heavy and dizzy, walked a few steps, and dropped on to a sofa in the boudoir, his eyes sealed in leaden slumbers.

“Mariette,” said Fanny Beaupré to Godeschal’s sister, who had come in at about two in the morning, “will you dine here tomorrow? My Camusot will be here and Père Cardot; we will make them mad.”

“How?” cried Florentine. “My old man has not sent me word.”

“He will be here this morning to tell you that he proposes to sing la Mere Godichon” replied Fanny Beaupré. “He must give a housewarming too, poor man.”

“The devil take him and his orgies!” exclaimed Florentine. “He and his son-in-law are worse than magistrates or managers.⁠—After all, Mariette, you dine well here,” she went on. “Cardot orders everything from Chevet. Bring your Duc de Maufrigneuse; we will have fun, and make them dance.”

Oscar, who caught the names of Cardot and Camusot, made an effort to rouse himself; but he could only mutter a word or two which were not heard, and fell back on the silk cushion.

“You are provided, I see,” said Fanny Beaupré to Florentine, with a laugh.

“Ah! poor boy, he is drunk with punch and despair. He has lost some money his master had entrusted to him for some office business. He was going to kill himself, so I lent him a thousand francs, of which those robbers Finot and Giroudeau have fleeced him. Poor innocent!”

“But we must wake him,” said Mariette. “My brother will stand no nonsense, nor his master either.”

“Well, wake him if you can, and get him away,” said Florentine, going back into the drawing-room to take leave of those who were not gone.

The party then took to dancing⁠—character dances, as they were called; and at daybreak Florentine went to bed very tired, having forgotten Oscar, whom nobody, in fact, remembered, and who was still sleeping soundly.

At about eleven o’clock a terrible sound awoke the lad, who recognized his uncle Cardot’s voice, and thought he might get out of the scrape by pretending still to be asleep, so he hid his face in the handsome yellow velvet cushions in which he had passed the night.

“Really, my little Florentine,” the old man was saying, “it is neither good nor nice of you. You were dancing last night in the Ruines, and then spent the night in an orgy. Why, it is simply destruction to your freshness, not to say that it is really ungrateful of you to inaugurate this splendid apartment without me, with strangers, without my knowing it⁠—who knows what may have happened!”

“You old monster!” cried Florentine. “Have you not a key to come in whenever you like? We danced till half-past five, and you are so cruel as to wake me at eleven.”

“Half-past eleven, Titine,” said the old man humbly. “I got up early to order a dinner from Chevet worthy of an Archbishop.⁠—How they have spoilt the carpets! Whom had you here?”

“You ought to make no complaints, for Fanny Beaupré told me that you and Camusot were coming, so I have asked the others to meet you⁠—Tullia, du Bruel, Mariette, the Duc de Maufrigneuse, Florine, and Nathan. And you will have the five loveliest women who ever stood behind the footlights, and we will dance you a pas de Zéphire.”

“It is killing work to lead such a life!” cried old Cardot. “What a heap of broken glasses, what destruction! The anteroom is a scene of horror!”

At this moment the amiable old man stood speechless and fascinated, like a bird under the gaze of a reptile. He caught sight of the outline of a young figure clothed in black cloth.

“Heyday! Mademoiselle Cabirolle!” said he at last.

“Well, what now?” said she.

The girl’s eyes followed the direction of Père Cardot’s gaze, and when she saw the youth still there, she burst into a fit of crazy laughter, which not only struck the old man dumb, but compelled Oscar to look round. Florentine pulled him up by the arm, and half choked with laughing as she saw the hangdog look of the uncle and nephew.

“You here, nephew?”

“Oh ho! He is your nephew?” cried Florentine, laughing more than ever. “You never mentioned this nephew of yours.⁠—Then Mariette did not take you home?” said she to Oscar, who sat petrified. “What is to become of the poor boy?”

“Whatever he pleases!” replied old Cardot drily, and turning to the door to go away.

“One minute, Papa Cardot; you will have to help your nephew out of the mess he has got into by my fault, for he has gambled away his master’s money, five hundred francs, besides a thousand francs of mine which I lent him to get it back again.”

“Wretched boy, have you lost fifteen hundred francs at play⁠—at your age?”

“Oh! uncle, uncle!” cried the unhappy Oscar, cast by these words into the depths of horror at his position. He fell on his knees at his uncle’s feet with clasped hands. “It is twelve o’clock; I am lost, disgraced. Monsieur Desroches will show no mercy⁠—there was an important business, a matter on which he prides himself⁠—I was to have gone this morning to fetch away the copy of the judgment in Vandenesse vs. Vandenesse! What has happened?⁠—What has become of me?⁠—Save me for my father’s sake⁠—for my aunt’s.⁠—Come with me to Maître Desroches and explain; find some excuse⁠—”

The words came out in gasps, between sobs and tears that might have softened the Sphinx in the desert of Luxor.

“Now, old skinflint,” cried the dancer in tears, “can you leave your own nephew to disgrace, the son of the man to whom you owe your fortune, since he is Oscar Husson? Save him, I say, or Titine refuses to own you as her milord!”

“But how came he here?” asked the old man.

“What! so as to forget the hour when he should have gone the errand he speaks of? Don’t you see, he got drunk and dropped there, dead-tired and sleepy? Georges and his cousin Frédéric treated Desroches’ clerks yesterday at the Rocher de Cancale.”

Cardot looked at her, still doubtful.

“Come, now, old baboon, if it were anything more should I not have hidden him more effectually?” cried she.

“Here, then, take the five hundred francs, you scamp!” said Cardot to his nephew. “That is all you will ever have of me. Go and make matters up with your master if you can.⁠—I will repay the thousand francs mademoiselle lent you, but never let me hear your name again.”

Oscar fled, not wishing to hear more; but when he was in the street he did not know where to go.

The chance which ruins men, and the chance that serves them, seemed to be playing against each other on equal terms for Oscar that dreadful morning; but he was destined to fail with a master who, when he made up his mind, never changed it.

Mariette, on returning home, horrified at what might befall her brother’s charge, wrote a line to Godeschal, enclosing a five-hundred-franc note, and telling her brother of Oscar’s drunken bout and disasters. The good woman, ere she went to sleep, instructed her maid to take this letter to Desroches’ chambers before seven. Godeschal, on his part, waking at six, found no Oscar. He at once guessed what had happened. He took five hundred francs out of his savings and hurried off to the copying-clerk to fetch the judgment, so as to lay it before Desroches for signature in his office at eight. Desroches, who always rose at four, came to his room at seven o’clock. Mariette’s maid, not finding her mistress’ brother in his attic, went down to the office and was there met by Desroches, to whom she very naturally gave the note.

“Is it a matter of business?” asked the lawyer. “I am Maître Desroches.”

“You can see, monsieur,” said the woman.

Desroches opened the letter and read it. On finding the five-hundred-franc note he went back into his own room, furious with his second clerk. Then at half-past seven he heard Godeschal dictating a report on the judgment to another clerk, and a few minutes later Godeschal came into the room in triumph.

“Was it Oscar Husson who went to Simon this morning?” asked Desroches.

“Yes, monsieur,” replied Godeschal.

“Who gave him the money?” said the lawyer.

“You,” said Godeschal, “on Saturday.”

“It rains five-hundred-franc notes, it would seem!” cried Desroches. “Look here, Godeschal, you are a good fellow, but that little wretch Husson does not deserve your generosity. I hate a fool, but yet more I hate people who will go wrong in spite of the care of those who are kind to them.” He gave Godeschal Mariette’s note and the five hundred francs she had sent. “Forgive me for opening it, but the maid said it was a matter of business.⁠—You must get rid of Oscar.”

“What trouble I have had with that poor little ne’er-do-well!” said Godeschal. “That scoundrel Georges Marest is his evil genius; he must avoid him like the plague, for I do not know what might happen if they met a third time.”

“How is that?” asked Desroches, and Godeschal sketched the story of the practical joking on the journey to Presles.

“To be sure,” said the lawyer. “I remember Joseph Bridau told me something about that at the time. It was to that meeting that we owed the Comte de Sérizy’s interest in Bridau’s brother.”

At this moment Moreau came in, for this suit over the Vandenesse property was an important affair to him. The Marquis wanted to sell the Vandenesse estate in lots, and his brother opposed such a proceeding.

Thus the land-agent was the recipient of the justifiable complaints and sinister prophecies fulminated by Desroches as against his second clerk; and the unhappy boy’s most friendly protector was forced to the conclusion that Oscar’s vanity was incorrigible.

“Make a pleader of him,” said Desroches; “he only has to pass his final; in that branch of the law his faults may prove to be useful qualities, for conceit spurs the tongue of half of our advocates.”

As it happened, Clapart was at this time out of health, and nursed by his wife, a painful and thankless task. The man worried the poor soul, who had hitherto never known how odious the nagging and spiteful taunts can be in which a half-imbecile creature gives vent to his irritation when poverty drives him into a sort of cunning rage. Delighted to have a sharp dagger that he could drive home to her motherly heart, he had suspected the fears for the future which were suggested to the hapless woman by Oscar’s conduct and faults. In fact, when a mother has received such a blow as she had felt from the adventure at Presles she lives in perpetual alarms; and by the way in which Madame Clapart cried up Oscar whenever he achieved a success, Clapart understood all her secret fears and would stir them up on the slightest pretext.

“Well, well, Oscar is getting on better than I expected of him. I always said his journey to Presles was only a blunder due to inexperience. Where is the young man who never made a mistake? Poor boy, he is heroic in his endurance of the privations he would never have known if his father had lived. God grant he may control his passions!” and so on.

So, while so many disasters were crowding on each other in the Rue de Vendôme and the Rue de Béthisy, Clapart, sitting by the fire wrapped in a shabby dressing-gown, was watching his wife, who was busy cooking over the bedroom fire some broth, Clapart’s herb tea, and her own breakfast.

“Good heavens! I wish I knew how things fell out yesterday. Oscar was to breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale, and spend the evening with some Marquise⁠—”

“Oh! don’t be in a hurry; sooner or later murder will out,” retorted her husband. “Do you believe in the Marquise? Go on; a boy who has his five senses and a love of extravagances⁠—as Oscar has, after all⁠—can find Marquises in Spain costing their weight in gold! He will come home some day loaded with debt⁠—”

“You don’t know how to be cruel enough, and to drive me to despair!” exclaimed Madame Clapart. “You complained that my son ate up all your salary, and he never cost you a sou. For two years you have not had a fault to find with Oscar, and now he is second clerk, his uncle and Monsieur Moreau provide him with everything, and he has eight hundred francs a year of his own earning. If we have bread in our old age, we shall owe it to that dear boy. You really are too unjust.”

“You consider my foresight an injustice?” said the sick man sourly.

There came at this moment a sharp ring at the bell. Madame Clapart ran to open the door, and then remained in the outer room, talking to Moreau, who had come himself to soften the blow that the news of Oscar’s levity must be to his poor mother.

“What! He lost his master’s money?” cried Madame Clapart in tears.

“Aha! what did I tell you?” said Clapart, who appeared like a spectre in the doorway of the drawing-room, to which he had shuffled across under the prompting of curiosity.

“But what is to be done with him?” said his wife, whose distress left her insensible to this stab.

“Well, if he bore my name,” said Moreau, “I should calmly allow him to be drawn for the conscription, and if he should be called to serve, I would not pay for a substitute. This is the second time that sheer vanity has brought him into mischief. Well, vanity may lead him to some brilliant action, which will win him promotion as a soldier. Six years’ service will at any rate add a little weight to his feather-brain, and as he has only his final examination to pass, he will not do so badly if he finds himself a pleader at six-and-twenty, if he chooses to go to the bar after paying the blood-tax, as they say. This time, at any rate, he will have had his punishment, he will gain experience and acquire habits of subordination. He will have served his apprenticeship to life before serving it in the Law Courts.”

“If that is the sentence you would pronounce on a son,” said Madame Clapart, “I see that a father’s heart is very unlike a mother’s.⁠—My poor Oscar⁠—a soldier⁠—?”

“Would you rather see him jump head foremost into the Seine after doing something to disgrace himself? He can never now be an attorney; do you think he is fitted yet to be an advocate? While waiting till he reaches years of discretion, what will he become? A thorough scamp; military discipline will at any rate preserve him from that.”

“Could he not go into another office? His uncle Cardot would certainly pay for a substitute⁠—and Oscar will dedicate his thesis to him⁠—”

The clatter of a cab, in which was piled all Oscar’s personal property, announced the wretched lad’s return, and in a few minutes he made his appearance.

“So here you are, Master Joli-Coeur!” cried Clapart.

Oscar kissed his mother, and held out a hand to Monsieur Moreau, which that gentleman would not take. Oscar answered this contempt with a look to which indignation lent a firmness new to the bystanders.

“Listen, Monsieur Clapart,” said the boy, so suddenly grown to be a man; “you worry my poor mother beyond endurance, and you have a right to do so; she is your wife⁠—for her sins. But it is different with me. In a few months I shall be of age, and you have no power over me even while I am a minor. I have never asked you for anything. Thanks to this gentleman, I have never cost you one sou, and I owe you no sort of gratitude; so, have the goodness to leave me in peace.”

Clapart, startled by this apostrophe, went back to his armchair by the fire. The reasoning of the lawyer’s clerk and the suppressed fury of a young man of twenty, who had just had a sharp lecture from his friend Godeschal, had reduced the sick man’s imbecility to silence, once and for all.

“An error into which you would have been led quite as easily as I, at my age,” said Oscar to Moreau, “made me commit a fault which Desroches thinks serious, but which is really trivial enough; I am far more vexed with myself for having taken Florentine, of the Gaîté theatre, for a Marquise, and actresses for women of rank, than for having lost fifteen hundred francs at a little orgy where everybody, even Godeschal, was somewhat screwed. This time, at any rate, I have hurt no one but myself. I am thoroughly cured.⁠—If you will help me, Monsieur Moreau, I swear to you that in the course of the six years during which I must remain a clerk before I can practice⁠—”

“Stop a bit!” said Moreau. “I have three children; I can make no promises.”

“Well, well,” said Madame Clapart, with a reproachful look at Moreau, “your uncle Cardot⁠—”

“No more uncle Cardot for me,” replied Oscar, and he related the adventure of the Rue de Vendôme.

Madame Clapart, feeling her knees give way under the weight of her body, dropped on one of the dining-room chairs as if a thunderbolt had fallen.

“Every possible misfortune at once!” said she, and fainted away.

Moreau lifted the poor woman in his arms, and carried her to her bed. Oscar stood motionless and speechless.

“There is nothing for you but to serve as a soldier,” said the estate-agent, coming back again. “That idiot Clapart will not last three months longer, it seems to me; your mother will not have a sou in the world; ought I not rather to keep for her the little money I can spare? This was what I could not say to you in her presence. As a soldier, you will earn your bread, and you may meditate on what life is to the penniless.”

“I might draw a lucky number,” said Oscar.

“And if you do?⁠—Your mother has been a very good mother to you. She gave you an education, she started you in a good way; you have lost it; what could you do now? Without money, a man is helpless, as you now know, and you are not the man to begin all over again by pulling off your coat and putting on a workman’s or artisan’s blouse. And then your mother worships you.⁠—Do you want to kill her? For she would die of seeing you fallen so low.”

Oscar sat down, and could no longer control his tears, which flowed freely. He understood now a form of appeal which had been perfectly incomprehensible at the time of his first error.

“Penniless folks ought to be perfect!” said Moreau to himself, not appreciating how deeply true this cruel verdict was.

“My fate will soon be decided,” said Oscar; “the numbers are drawn the day after tomorrow. Between this and then I will come to some decision.”

Moreau, deeply grieved in spite of his austerity, left the family in the Rue de la Cerisaie to their despair.

Three days after Oscar drew Number 27. To help the poor lad, the ex-steward of Presles found courage enough to go to the Comte de Sérizy and beg his interest to get Oscar into the cavalry. As it happened, the Count’s son, having come out well at his last examination on leaving the École Polytechnique, had been passed by favor, with the rank of sublieutenant, into the cavalry regiment commanded by the Duc de Maufrigneuse. And so, in the midst of his fall, Oscar had the small piece of luck of being enlisted in this fine regiment at the Comte de Sérizy’s recommendation, with the promise of promotion to be quartermaster in a year’s time.

Thus chance placed the lawyer’s clerk under the command of Monsieur de Sérizy’s son.

After some days of pining, Madame Clapart, who was deeply stricken by all these misfortunes, gave herself up to the remorse which is apt to come over mothers whose conduct has not been blameless, and who, as they grow old, are led to repent. She thought of herself as one accursed. She ascribed the miseries of her second marriage and all her son’s ill-fortune to the vengeance of God, who was punishing her in expiation of the sins and pleasures of her youth. This idea soon became a conviction. The poor soul went to confession, for the first time in forty years, to the Vicar of the Church of Saint-Paul, the Abbé Gaudron, who plunged her into the practices of religion.

But a spirit so crushed and so loving as Madame Clapart’s could not fail to become simply pious. The Aspasia of the Directory yearned to atone for her sins that she might bring the blessing of God down on the head of her beloved Oscar, and before long she had given herself up to the most earnest practices of devotion and works of piety. She believed that she had earned the favor of Heaven when she had succeeded in saving Monsieur Clapart, who, thanks to her care, lived to torment her; but she persisted in seeing in the tyranny of this half-witted old man the trials inflicted by Him who loves while He chastens us.

Oscar’s conduct meanwhile was so satisfactory that in 1830 he was first quartermaster of the company under the Vicomte de Sérizy, equivalent in rank to a sublieutenant of the line, as the Duc de Maufrigneuse’s regiment was attached to the King’s guards. Oscar Husson was now five-and-twenty. As the regiments of Guards were always quartered in Paris, or within thirty leagues of the capital, he could see his mother from time to time and confide his sorrows to her, for he was clear-sighted enough to perceive that he could never rise to be an officer. At that time cavalry officers were almost always chosen from among the younger sons of the nobility, and men without the distinguishing de got on but slowly. Oscar’s whole ambition was to get out of the guards and enter some cavalry regiment of the line as a sublieutenant; and in the month of February 1830 Madame Clapart, through the interest of the Abbé Gaudron, now at the head of his parish, gained the favor of the Dauphiness, which secured Oscar’s promotion.

Although the ambitious young soldier professed ardent devotion to the Bourbons, he was at heart a liberal. In the struggle, in 1830, he took the side of the people. This defection, which proved to be important by reason of the way in which it acted, drew public attention to Oscar Husson. In the moment of triumph, in the month of August, Oscar, promoted to be lieutenant, received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and succeeded in obtaining the post of aide-de-camp to la Fayette, who made him captain in 1832. When this devotee to “the best of all Republics” was deprived of his command of the National Guard, Oscar Husson, whose devotion to the new royal family was almost fanaticism, was sent as major with a regiment to Africa on the occasion of the first expedition undertaken by the Prince. The Vicomte de Sérizy was now lieutenant-colonel of that regiment. At the fight at the Macta, where the Arabs remained masters of the field, Monsieur de Sérizy was left wounded under his dead horse. Oscar addressed his company.

“It is riding to our death,” said he, “but we cannot desert our Colonel.”

He was the first to charge the enemy, and his men, quite electrified, followed. The Arabs, in the shock of surprise at this furious and unexpected attack, allowed Oscar to pick up his Colonel, whom he took on his horse and rode off at a pelting gallop, though in this act, carried out in the midst of furious fighting, he had two cuts from a yataghan on the left arm.

Oscar’s valiant conduct was rewarded by the Cross of an Officer of the Legion of Honor, and promotion to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He nursed the Vicomte de Sérizy with devoted affection; the Comtesse de Sérizy joined her son and carried him to Toulon, where, as all the world knows, he died of his wounds. Madame de Sérizy did not part her son from the man who, after rescuing him from the Arabs, had cared for him with such unfailing devotion.

Oscar himself was so severely wounded that the surgeons called in by the Countess to attend her son pronounced amputation necessary. The Count forgave Oscar his follies on the occasion of the journey to Presles, and even regarded himself as the young man’s debtor when he had buried his only surviving son in the chapel of the Château de Sérizy.

A long time after the battle of the Macta, an old lady dressed in black, leaning on the arm of a man of thirty-four, at once recognizable as a retired officer by the loss of one arm and the rosette of the Legion of Honor at his buttonhole, was to be seen at eight o’clock one morning, waiting under the gateway of the Silver Lion, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, till the diligence should be ready to start.

Pierrotin, the manager of the coach services of the Valley of the Oise, passing by Saint-Leu-Taverny and l’Isle-Adam, as far as Beaumont, would hardly have recognized in this bronzed officer that little Oscar Husson whom he had once driven to Presles. Madame Clapart, a widow at last, was quite as unrecognizable as her son. Clapart, one of the victims of Fieschi’s machine, had done his wife a better turn by the manner of his death than he had ever done her in his life. Of course, Clapart, the idler, the lounger, had taken up a place on his Boulevard to see his legion reviewed. Thus the poor bigot had found her name down for a pension of fifteen hundred francs a year by the decree which indemnified the victims of this infernal machine.

The vehicle, to which four dappled gray horses were now being harnessed⁠—steeds worthy of the Messageries royales⁠—was in four divisions, the coupé, the intérieur, the rotonde behind, and the imperiale at top. It was identically the same as the diligences called Gondoles, which, in our day, still maintain a rivalry on the Versailles road with two lines of railway. Strong and light, well painted and clean, lined with good blue cloth, furnished with blinds of arabesque design and red morocco cushions, the Hirondelle de l’Oise could carry nineteen travelers. Pierrotin, though he was by this time fifty-six, was little changed. He still wore a blouse over his black coat, and still smoked his short pipe, as he watched two porters in stable-livery piling numerous packages on the roof of his coach.

“Have you taken seats?” he asked of Madame Clapart and Oscar, looking at them as if he were searching his memory for some association of ideas.

“Yes, two inside places, name of Bellejambe, my servant,” said Oscar. “He was to take them when he left the house last evening.”

“Oh, then monsieur is the new collector at Beaumont,” said Pierrotin. “You are going down to take the place of Monsieur Margueron’s nephew?”

“Yes,” replied Oscar, pressing his mother’s arm as a hint to her to say nothing. For now he in his turn wished to remain unknown for a time.

At this instant Oscar was startled by recognizing Georges’ voice calling from the street:

“Have you a seat left, Pierrotin?”

“It strikes me that you might say Monsieur Pierrotin without breaking your jaw,” said the coach-owner angrily.

But for the tone of his voice Oscar could never have recognized the practical joker who had twice brought him such ill-luck. Georges, almost bald, had but three or four locks of hair left above his ears, and carefully combed up to disguise his bald crown as far as possible. A development of fat in the wrong place, a bulbous stomach, had spoiled the elegant figure of the once handsome young man. Almost vulgar in shape and mien, Georges showed the traces of disaster in love, and of a life of constant debauchery, in a spotty red complexion, and thickened, vinous features. His eyes had lost the sparkle and eagerness of youth, which can only be preserved by decorous and studious habits.

Georges, dressed with evident indifference to his appearance, wore a pair of trousers with straps, but shabby, and of a style that demanded patent leather boots; the boots he wore, thick and badly polished, were at least three-quarters of a year old, which is in Paris as much as three years anywhere else. A shabby waistcoat, a tie elaborately knotted, though it was but an old bandanna, betrayed the covert penury to which a decayed dandy may be reduced. To crown all, at this early hour of the day Georges wore a dress-coat instead of a morning-coat, the symptom of positive poverty. This coat, which must have danced at many a ball, had fallen, like its owner, from the opulence it once represented, to the duties of daily scrub. The seams of the black cloth showed white ridges, the collar was greasy, and wear had pinked out the cuffs into a dog’s tooth edge. Still, Georges was bold enough to invite attention by wearing lemon-colored gloves⁠—rather dirty, to be sure, and on one finger the outline of a large ring was visible in black.

Round his tie, of which the ends were slipped through a pretentious gold ring, twined a brown silk chain in imitation of hair, ending no doubt in a watch. His hat, though stuck on with an air, showed more evidently than all these other symptoms the poverty of a man who never has sixteen francs to spend at the hatter’s when he lives from hand to mouth. Florentine’s ci-devant lover flourished a cane with a chased handle, silver-gilt, but horribly dinted. His blue trousers, tartan waistcoat, sky-blue tie, and red-striped cotton shirt, bore witness, in spite of so much squalor, to such a passion for show that the contrast was not merely laughable, but a lesson.

“And this is Georges?” said Oscar to himself. “A man I left in possession of thirty thousand francs a year!”

“Has Monsieur de Pierrotin still a vacant seat in his coupé?” asked Georges ironically.

“No, my coupé is taken by a peer of France, Monsieur Moreau’s son-in-law, Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, with his wife and his mother-in-law. I have only a seat in the body of the coach.”

“The deuce! It would seem that under every form of government peers of France travel in Pierrotin’s conveyances! I will take the seat in the intérieur,” said Georges, with a reminiscence of the journey with Monsieur de Sérizy.

He turned to stare at Oscar and the widow, but recognized neither mother nor son. Oscar was deeply tanned by the African sun; he had a very thick moustache and whiskers; his hollow cheeks and marked features were in harmony with his military deportment. The officer’s rosette, the loss of an arm, the plain dark dress, would all have been enough to mislead Georges’ memory, if indeed he remembered his former victim. As to Madame Clapart, whom he had scarcely seen on the former occasion, ten years spent in pious exercises of the severest kind had absolutely transformed her. No one could have imagined that this sort of Gray Sister hid one of the Aspasias of 1797.

A huge old man, plainly but very comfortably dressed, in whom Oscar recognized old Léger, came up slowly and heavily; he nodded familiarly to Pierrotin, who seemed to regard him with the respect due in all countries to millionaires.

“Heh! why, it is Père Léger! more ponderous than ever!” cried Georges.

“Whom have I the honor of addressing?” asked the farmer very drily.

“What! Don’t you remember Colonel Georges, Ali Pasha’s friend? We traveled this road together, once upon a time, with the Comte de Sérizy, who preserved his incognito.”

One of the commonest follies of persons who have come down in the world is insisting on recognizing people, and on being recognized.

“You are very much changed,” said the old land-agent, now worth two millions of francs.

“Everything changes,” said Georges. “Look at the Silver Lion inn, and at Pierrotin’s coach, and see if they are the same as they were fourteen years since.”

“Pierrotin is now owner of all the coaches that serve the Oise Valley, and has very good vehicles,” said Monsieur Léger. “He is a citizen now of Beaumont, and keeps an inn there where his coaches put up; he has a wife and daughter who know their business⁠—”

An old man of about seventy came out of the inn and joined the group of travelers who were waiting to be told to get in.

“Come along, Papa Reybert!” said Léger. “We have no one to wait for now but your great man.”

“Here he is,” said the land-steward of Presles, turning to Joseph Bridau.

Neither Oscar nor Georges would have recognized the famous painter, for his face was the strangely worn countenance now so well known, and his manner was marked by the confidence born of success. His black overcoat displayed the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. His dress, which was careful in all points, showed that he was on his way to some country fête.

At this moment a clerk with a paper in his hand bustled out of an office constructed at one end of the old kitchen of the Silver Lion, and stood in front of the still unoccupied coupé.

“Monsieur and Madame de Canalis, three places!” he called out, then coming to the intérieur, he said, “Monsieur Bellejambe, two places; Monsieur Reybert, three; monsieur⁠—your name?” added he to Georges.

“Georges Marest,” replied the fallen hero in an undertone.

The clerk then went to the rotonde (the omnibus at the back of the old French diligence), round which stood a little crowd of nurses, country folks, and small shopkeepers, taking leave of each other. After packing the six travelers, the clerk called the names of four youths who clambered up on to the seat on the imperiale, and then said, “Right behind!” as the signal for starting.

Pierrotin took his place by the driver, a young man in a blouse, who in his turn said, “Get’ up,” to his horses.

The coach, set in motion by four horses purchased at Roye, was pulled up the hill of the Faubourg Saint-Denis at a gentle trot, but having once gained the level above Saint-Laurent, it spun along like a mail-coach as far as Saint-Denis in forty minutes. They did not stop at the inn famous for cheesecakes, but turned off to the left of Saint-Denis, down the valley of Montmorency.

It was here, as they turned, that Georges broke the silence which had been kept so far by the travelers who were studying each other.

“We keep rather better time than we did fifteen years ago,” said he, taking out a silver watch. “Heh! Père Léger?”

“People are so condescending as to address me as Monsieur Léger,” retorted the millionaire.

“Why, this is our blusterer of my first journey to Presles,” exclaimed Joseph Bridau. “Well, and have you been fighting new campaigns in Asia, Africa, and America?” asked the great painter.

“By Jupiter! I helped in the Revolution of July, and that was enough, for it ruined me.”

“Oho! you helped in the Revolution of July, did you?” said Bridau. “I am not surprised, for I never could believe what I was told, that it made itself.”

“How strangely meetings come about,” said Monsieur Léger, turning to Reybert. “Here, Papa Reybert, you see the notary’s clerk to whom you owe indirectly your place as steward of the estates of Sérizy.”

“But we miss Mistigris, now so famous as Léon de Lora,” said Joseph Bridau, “and the little fellow who was such a fool as to tell the Count all about his skin complaints⁠—which he has cured at last⁠—and his wife, from whom he has parted to die in peace.”

“Monsieur le Comte is missing too,” said Reybert.

“Oh!” said Bridau sadly, “I am afraid that the last expedition he will ever make will be to l’Isle-Adam, to be present at my wedding.”

“He still drives out in the park,” remarked old Reybert.

“Does his wife come often to see him?” asked Léger.

“Once a month,” replied Reybert. “She still prefers Paris; she arranged the marriage of her favorite niece, Mademoiselle du Rouvre, to a very rich young Pole, Count Laginski, in September last⁠—”

“And who will inherit Monsieur de Sérizy’s property?” asked Madame Clapart.

“His wife.⁠—She will bury him,” replied Georges. “The Countess is still handsome for a woman of fifty-four, still very elegant, and at a distance quite illusory⁠—”

“Elusive, you mean? She will always elude you,” Léger put in, wishing, perhaps, to turn the tables on the man who had mystified him.

“I respect her,” said Georges in reply.⁠—“But, by the way, what became of that steward who was so abruptly dismissed in those days?”

“Moreau?” said Léger. “He is deputy now for Seine-et-Oise.”

“Oh, the famous centre Moreau (of l’Oise)?” said Georges.

“Yes,” replied Léger. “Monsieur Moreau (of l’Oise). He helped rather more than you in the Revolution of July, and he has lately bought the splendid estate of Pointel, between Presles and Beaumont.”

“What, close to the place he managed, and so near his old master! That is in very bad taste,” cried Georges.

“Do not talk so loud,” said Monsieur de Reybert, “for Madame Moreau and her daughter, the Baronne de Canalis, and her son-in-law, the late minister, are in the coupé.”

“What fortune did he give her that the great orator would marry his daughter?”

“Well, somewhere about two millions,” said Léger.

“He had a pretty taste in millions,” said Georges, smiling, and in an undertone, “He began feathering his nest at Presles⁠—”

“Say no more about Monsieur Moreau,” exclaimed Oscar. “It seems to me that you might have learned to hold your tongue in a public conveyance!”

Joseph Bridau looked for a few seconds at the one-armed officer, and then said:

“Monsieur is not an ambassador, but his rosette shows that he has risen in the world; and nobly too, for my brother and General Giroudeau have often mentioned you in their despatches⁠—”

“Oscar Husson!” exclaimed Georges. “On my honor, but for your voice, I should never have recognized you.”

“Ah! is this the gentleman who so bravely carried off the Vicomte Jules de Sérizy from the Arabs?” asked Reybert, “and to whom Monsieur le Comte has given the collectorship at Beaumont pending his appointment to Pontoise?”

“Yes, monsieur,” said Oscar.

“Well, then,” said the painter, “I hope, monsieur, that you will do me the pleasure of being present at my marriage, at l’Isle-Adam.”

“Whom are you marrying?” asked Oscar.

“Mademoiselle Léger, Monsieur de Reybert’s granddaughter. Monsieur le Comte de Sérizy was good enough to arrange the matter for me. I owe him much as an artist, and he was anxious to establish my fortune before his death⁠—I had scarcely thought of it⁠—”

“Then Père Léger married?” said Georges.

“My daughter,” said Monsieur de Reybert, “and without any money.”

“And he has children?”

“One daughter. Quite enough for a widower who had no other children,” said Père Léger. “And, like my partner Moreau, I shall have a famous man for my son-in-law.”

“So you still live at l’Isle-Adam?” said Georges to Monsieur Léger, almost respectfully.

“Yes; I purchased Cassan.”

“Well, I am happy in having chosen this particular day for doing the Oise Valley,” said Georges, “for you may do me a service, gentlemen.”

“In what way?” asked Léger.

“Well, thus,” said Georges. “I am employed by the Society of l’Espérance, which has just been incorporated, and its bylaws approved by letters patent from the King. This institution is, in ten years, to give marriage portions to girls, and annuities to old people; it will pay for the education of children; in short, it takes care of everybody⁠—”

“So I should think!” said old Léger, laughing. “In short, you are an insurance agent.”

“No, monsieur, I am Inspector-General, instructed to establish agencies and correspondents with the Company throughout France; I am acting only till the agents are appointed; for it is a delicate and difficult matter to find honest men⁠—”

“But how did you lose your thirty thousand francs a year?” asked Oscar.

“As you lost your arm!” the ex-notary’s clerk replied sharply to the ex-attorney’s clerk.

“Then you invested your fortune in some brilliant deed?” said Oscar, with somewhat bitter irony.

“By Jupiter! my investments are a sore subject. I have more deeds than enough.”

They had reached Saint-Leu-Taverny, where the travelers got out while they changed horses. Oscar admired the briskness with which Pierrotin unbuckled the straps of the swing-bar, while his driver took out the leaders.

Poor Pierrotin! thought he. Like me, he has not risen much in life. Georges has sunk into poverty. All the others, by speculation and skill, have made fortunes. “Do we breakfast here, Pierrotin?” he asked, clapping the man on the shoulder.

“I am not the driver,” said Pierrotin.

“What are you, then?” asked Colonel Husson.

“I am the owner,” replied Pierrotin.

“Well, well, do not quarrel with an old friend,” said Oscar, pointing to his mother, but still with a patronizing air; “do you not remember Madame Clapart?”

It was the more graceful of Oscar to name his mother to Pierrotin, because at this moment Madame Moreau (de l’Oise) had got out of the coupé and looked scornfully at Oscar and his mother as she heard the name.

“On my honor, madame, I should never have known you; nor you either, monsieur. You get it hot in Africa, it would seem?”

The disdainful pity Oscar had felt for Pierrotin was the last blunder into which vanity betrayed the hero of this Scene; and for that he was punished, though not too severely. On this wise: Two months after he had settled at Beaumont-sur-Oise, Oscar paid his court to Mademoiselle Georgette Pierrotin, whose fortune amounted to a hundred and fifty thousand francs, and by the end of the winter of 1838 he married the daughter of the owner of the Oise Valley coach service.

The results of the journey to Presles had given Oscar discretion, the evening at Florentine’s had disciplined his honesty, the hardships of a military life had taught him the value of social distinctions and submission to fate. He was prudent, capable, and consequently happy. The Comte de Sérizy, before his death, obtained for Oscar the place of Revenue Collector at Pontoise. The influence of Monsieur Moreau (de l’Oise), of the Comtesse de Sérizy, and of Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, who, sooner or later, will again have a seat in the Ministry, will secure Monsieur Husson’s promotion to the post of Receiver-General, and the Camusots now recognize him as a relation.

Oscar is a commonplace man, gentle, unpretentious, and modest; faithful⁠—like the Government he serves⁠—to the happy medium in all things. He invites neither envy nor scorn. In short, he is the modern French citizen.

Endnotes

1. To translate these not always funny jests is impossible. I have generally tried for no more than an equivalent rendering. —⁠Translator ↩

Colophon

A Start in Life
was published in 1845 by
Honoré de Balzac.
It was translated from French in 1901 by
Clara Bell.

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