All who know him declare that they have never met, not even in the Egyptian museum at Turin, so agreeable a mummy.  In no country in the world did parasitism ever take on so pleasant a form.  Never did selfishness of a most concentrated kind appear less forth-putting, less offensive, than in this old gentleman; it stood him in place of devoted friendship.  If some one asked Monsieur de Valois to do him a little service which might have discommoded him, that some one did not part from the worthy chevalier without being truly enchanted with him, and quite convinced that he either could not do the service demanded, or that he should injure the affair if he meddled in it.

To explain the problematic existence of the chevalier, the historian, whom Truth, that cruel wanton, grasps by the throat, is compelled to say that after the “glorious” sad days of July, Alencon discovered that the chevalier’s nightly winnings amounted to about one hundred and fifty francs every three months; and that the clever old nobleman had had the pluck to send to himself his annuity in order not to appear in the eyes of a community, which loves the main chance, to be entirely without resources.  Many of his friends (he was by that time dead, you will please remark) have contested mordicus this curious fact, declaring it to be a fable, and upholding the Chevalier de Valois as a respectable and worthy gentleman whom the liberals calumniated.  Luckily for shrewd players, there are people to be found among the spectators who will always sustain them.  Ashamed of having to defend a piece of wrong-doing, they stoutly deny it.  Do not accuse them of wilful infatuation; such men have a sense of their dignity; governments set them the example of a virtue which consists in burying their dead without chanting the Misere of their defeats.  If the chevalier did allow himself this bit of shrewd practice,—­which, by the bye, would have won him the regard of the Chevalier de Gramont, a smile from the Baron de Foeneste, a shake of the hand from the Marquis de Moncade,—­was he any the less that amiable guest, that witty talker, that imperturbable card-player, that famous teller of anecdotes, in whom all Alencon took delight?  Besides, in what way was this action, which is certainly within the rights of a man’s own will, —­in what way was it contrary to the ethics of a gentleman?  When so many persons are forced to pay annuities to others, what more natural than to pay one to his own best friend?  But Laius is dead—­

To return to the period of which we are writing:  after about fifteen years of this way of life the chevalier had amassed ten thousand and some odd hundred francs.  On the return of the Bourbons, one of his old friends, the Marquis de Pombreton, formerly lieutenant in the Black mousquetaires, returned to him—­so he said—­twelve hundred pistoles which he had lent to the marquis for the purpose of emigrating.  This event made a sensation; it was used later to refute the sarcasms of the “Constitutionnel,”