“If it is so, cousin, I could not think of accepting such a valuable present from you.  It would be better to lay up the money for yourself,” said Mme. de Marville; but all the same, she asked no better than to keep the splendid fan.

“It is time that it should pass from the service of Vice into the hands of Virtue,” said the good soul, recovering his assurance.  “It has taken a century to work the miracle.  No princess at Court, you may be sure, will have anything to compare with it; for, unfortunately, men will do more for a Pompadour than for a virtuous queen, such is human nature.”

“Very well,” Mme. de Marville said, laughing, “I will accept your present.—­Cecile, my angel, go to Madeleine and see that dinner is worthy of your cousin.”

Mme. de Marville wished to make matters even.  Her request, made aloud, in defiance of all rules of good taste, sounded so much like an attempt to repay at once the balance due to the poor cousin, that Pons flushed red, like a girl found out in fault.  The grain of sand was a little too large; for some moments he could only let it work in his heart.  Cecile, a red-haired young woman, with a touch of pedantic affectation, combined her father’s ponderous manner with a trace of her mother’s hardness.  She went and left poor Pons face to face with the terrible Presidente.

“How nice she is, my little Lili!” said the mother.  She still called her Cecile by this baby name.

“Charming!” said Pons, twirling his thumbs.

“I cannot understand these times in which we live,” broke out the Presidente.  “What is the good of having a President of the Court of Appeal in Paris and a Commander of the Legion of Honor for your father, and for a grandfather the richest wholesale silk merchant in Paris, a deputy, and a millionaire that will be a peer of France some of these days?”

The President’s zeal for the new Government had, in fact, recently been rewarded with a commander’s ribbon—­thanks to his friendship with Popinot, said the envious.  Popinot himself, modest though he was, had, as has been seen, accepted the title of count, “for his son’s sake,” he told his numerous friends.

“Men look for nothing but money nowadays,” said Cousin Pons.  “No one thinks anything of you unless you are rich, and—­”

“What would it have been if Heaven had spared my poor little Charles!—­” cried the lady.

“Oh, with two children you would be poor,” returned the cousin.  “It practically means the division of the property.  But you need not trouble yourself, cousin; Cecile is sure to marry sooner or later.  She is the most accomplished girl I know.”

To such depths had Pons fallen by adapting himself to the company of his entertainers!  In their houses he echoed their ideas, and said the obvious thing, after the manner of a chorus in a Greek play.  He did not dare to give free play to the artist’s originality, which had overflowed in bright repartee when he was young; he had effaced himself, till he had almost lost his individuality; and if the real Pons appeared, as he had done a moment ago, he was immediately repressed.