“Hurrah!” cried the office like one man.  “Bravo! very well! vivat!  Long live the Marests!”

“What’s all this about?” asked Desroches, coming out from his private office.  “Ah! is that you, Georges?  I know what you are after; you want to demoralize my clerks.”

So saying, he withdrew into his own room, calling Oscar after him.

“Here,” he said, opening his cash-box, “are five hundred francs.  Go to the Palais, and get from the registrar a copy of the decision in Vandernesse against Vandernesse; it must be served to-night if possible.  I have promised a PROD of twenty francs to Simon.  Wait for the copy if it is not ready.  Above all, don’t let yourself be fooled; for Derville is capable, in the interest of his clients, to stick a spoke in our wheel.  Count Felix de Vandernesse is more powerful than his brother, our client, the ambassador.  Therefore keep your eyes open, and if there’s the slightest hitch come back to me at once.”

Oscar departed with the full intention of distinguishing himself in this little skirmish,—­the first affair entrusted to him since his installation as second clerk.

After the departure of Georges and Oscar, Godeschal sounded the new clerk to discover the joke which, as he thought, lay behind this Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos.  But Frederic, with the coolness and gravity of a king’s attorney, continued his cousin’s hoax, and by his way of answering, and his manner generally, he succeeded in making the office believe that the marquise might really be the widow of a Spanish grandee, to whom his cousin Georges was paying his addresses.  Born in Mexico, and the daughter of Creole parents, this young and wealthy widow was noted for the easy manners and habits of the women of those climates.

“She loves to laugh, she loves to sing, she loves to drink like me!” he said in a low voice, quoting the well-known song of Beranger.  “Georges,” he added, “is very rich; he has inherited from his father (who was a widower) eighteen thousand francs a year, and with the twelve thousand which an uncle has just left to each of us, he has an income of thirty thousand.  So he pays his debts, and gives up the law.  He hopes to be Marquis de las Florentinas, for the young widow is marquise in her own right, and has the privilege of giving her titles to her husband.”

Though the clerks were still a good deal undecided in mind as to the marquise, the double perspective of a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale and a fashionable festivity put them into a state of joyous expectation.  They reserved all points as to the Spanish lady, intending to judge her without appeal after the meeting.