“Poor unhappy boy! what grief he has caused me! " said Godeschal, “that tall ne’er-do-well of a Georges Marest is his evil genius; he ought to flee him like the plague; if not, he’ll bring him to some third disgrace.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Desroches.

Godeschal then related briefly the affair of the journey to Presles.

“Ah! yes,” said the lawyer, “I remember Joseph Bridau told me that story about the time it happened.  It is to that meeting that we owe the favor Monsieur de Serizy has since shown in the matter of Joseph’s brother, Philippe Bridau.”

At this moment Moreau, to whom the case of the Vandernesse estate was of much importance, entered the office.  The marquis wished to sell the land in parcels and the count was opposed to such a sale.  The land-agent received therefore the first fire of Desroches’ wrath against his ex-second clerk and all the threatening prophecies which he fulminated against him.  The result was that this most sincere friend and protector of the unhappy youth came to the conclusion that his vanity was incorrigible.

“Make him a barrister,” said Desroches.  “He has only his last examination to pass.  In that line, his defects might prove virtues, for self-love and vanity give tongues to half the attorneys.”

At this time Clapart, who was ill, was being nursed by his wife,—­a painful task, a duty without reward.  The sick man tormented the poor creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful teasing a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily savage, could be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless day.  Delighted to turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the mother, he had, in a measure, studied the fears that Oscar’s behavior and defects inspired in the poor woman.  When a mother receives from her child a shock like that of the affair at Presles, she continues in a state of constant fear, and, by the manner in which his wife boasted of Oscar every time he obtained the slightest success, Clapart knew the extent of her secret uneasiness, and he took pains to rouse it on every occasion.

“Well, Madame,” Clapart would say, “Oscar is doing better than I even hoped.  That journey to Presles was only a heedlessness of youth.  Where can you find young lads who do not commit just such faults?  Poor child! he bears his privations heroically!  If his father had lived, he would never have had any.  God grant he may know how to control his passions!” etc., etc.

While all these catastrophes were happening in the rue de Vendome and the rue de Bethisy, Clapart, sitting in the chimney corner, wrapped in an old dressing-gown, watched his wife, who was engaged over the fire in their bedroom in simultaneously making the family broth, Clapart’s “tisane,” and her own breakfast.

“Mon Dieu!  I wish I knew how the affair of yesterday ended.  Oscar was to breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale and spend the evening with a marquise—­”