“After all, let her pick him up if she chooses, it won’t be my doing.  Act as she asks you, my dear fellow; continue your researches and try to content her.  Perhaps she will then leave me in peace.  But I’ve had quite enough of it for to-day; good-by, I’m going out.”

With the view of obtaining some information of Rougemont, Mathieu at first thought of applying to La Couteau, if he could find her again; for which purpose it occurred to him that he might call on Madame Bourdieu in the Rue de Miromesnil.  But another and more certain means suggested itself.  He had been led to renew his intercourse with the Seguins, of whom he had for a time lost sight; and, much to his surprise, he had found Valentine’s former maid, Celeste, in the Avenue d’Antin once more.  Through this woman, he thought, he might reach La Couteau direct.

The renewal of the intercourse between the Froments and the Seguins was due to a very happy chance.  Mathieu’s son Ambroise, on leaving college, had entered the employment of an uncle of Seguin’s, Thomas du Hordel, one of the wealthiest commission merchants in Paris; and this old man, who, despite his years, remained very sturdy, and still directed his business with all the fire of youth, had conceived a growing fondness for Ambroise, who had great mental endowments and a real genius for commerce.  Du Hordel’s own children had consisted of two daughters, one of whom had died young, while the other had married a madman, who had lodged a bullet in his head and had left her childless and crazy like himself.  This partially explained the deep grandfatherly interest which Du Hordel took in young Ambroise, who was the handsomest of all the Froments, with a clear complexion, large black eyes, brown hair that curled naturally, and manners of much refinement and elegance.  But the old man was further captivated by the young fellow’s spirit of enterprise, the four modern languages which he spoke so readily, and the evident mastery which he would some day show in the management of a business which extended over the five parts of the world.  In his childhood, among his brothers and sisters, Ambroise had always been the boldest, most captivating and self-assertive.  The others might be better than he, but he reigned over them like a handsome, ambitious, greedy boy, a future man of gayety and conquest.  And this indeed he proved to be; by the charm of his victorious intellect he conquered old Du Hordel in a few months, even as later on he was destined to vanquish everybody and everything much as he pleased.  His strength lay in his power of pleasing and his power of action, a blending of grace with the most assiduous industry.