“Monseigneur,” said Georges Marest, “I may have amused myself with the bourgeois in the diligence, but—­”

“Let his Excellency finish what he was saying,” said the notary, digging his elbow into his clerk’s ribs.

“A notary,” continued the count, “ought to practise discretion, shrewdness, caution from the start; he should be incapable of such a blunder as taking a peer of France for a tallow-chandler—­”

“I am willing to be blamed for my faults,” said Georges; “but I never left my deeds at the mercy of—­”

“Now you are committing the fault of contradicting the word of a minister of State, a gentleman, an old man, and a client,” said the count.  “Give me that deed of sale.”

Georges turned over and over the papers in his portfolio.

“That will do; don’t disarrange those papers,” said the count, taking the deed from his pocket.  “Here is what you are looking for.”

Crottat turned the paper back and forth, so astonished was he at receiving it from the hands of his client.

“What does this mean, monsieur?” he said, finally, to Georges.

“If I had not taken it,” said the count, “Pere Leger,—­who is by no means such a ninny as you thought him from his questions about agriculture, by which he showed that he attended to his own business, —­Pere Leger might have seized that paper and guessed my purpose.  You must give me the pleasure of dining with me, but one on condition, —­that of describing, as you promised, the execution of the Muslim of Smyrna, and you must also finish the memoirs of some client which you have certainly read to be so well informed.”

“Schlague for blague!” said Leon de Lora, in a whisper, to Joseph Bridau.

“Gentlemen,” said the count to the two notaries and Messieurs Margueron and de Reybert, “let us go into the next room and conclude this business before dinner, because, as my friend Mistigris would say:  ‘Qui esurit constentit.’”

“Well, he is very good-natured,” said Leon de Lora to Georges Marest, when the count had left the room.

“Yes, HE may be, but my master isn’t,” said Georges, “and he will request me to go and blaguer somewhere else.”

“Never mind, you like travel,” said Bridau.

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

“Little idiot!” said Georges.  “If it hadn’t been for him the count would have been amused.  Well, anyhow, the lesson is a good one; and if ever again I am caught bragging in a public coach—­”

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

“And common,” added Mistigris. “’Vulgarity is the brother of pretension.’”

While the matter of the sale was being settled between Monsieur Margueron and the Comte de Serizy, assisted by their respective notaries in presence of Monsieur de Reybert, the ex-steward walked with slow steps to his own house.  There he entered the salon and sat down without noticing anything.  Little Husson, who was present, slipped into a corner, out of sight, so much did the livid face of his mother’s friend alarm him.