What a bit of luck to find something by way of proof of their assertions!  President du Ronceret, and the public prosecutor likewise, lent themselves admirably, so far as was compatible with their duty as magistrates, to the design of letting off the offender as easily as possible; indeed, they went deliberately out of their way to do this, well pleased to raise a Liberal clamor against their overlarge concessions.  And so, while seeming to serve the interests of the d’Esgrignons, they stirred up feeling against them.  The treacherous de Ronceret had it in his mind to pose as incorruptible at the right moment over some serious charge, with public opinion to back him up.  The young Count’s worst tendencies, moreover, were insidiously encouraged by two or three young men who followed in his train, paid court to him, won his favor, and flattered and obeyed him, with a view to confirming his belief in a noble’s supremacy; and all this at a time when a noble’s one chance of preserving his power lay in using it with the utmost discretion for half a century to come.

Du Croisier hoped to reduce the d’Esgrignons to the last extremity of poverty; he hoped to see their castle demolished, and their lands sold piecemeal by auction, through the follies which this harebrained boy was pretty certain to commit.  This was as far as he went; he did not think, with President du Ronceret, that Victurnien was likely to give justice another kind of hold upon him.  Both men found an ally for their schemes of revenge in Victurnien’s overweening vanity and love of pleasure.  President du Ronceret’s son, a lad of seventeen, was admirably fitted for the part of instigator.  He was one of the Count’s companions, a new kind of spy in du Croisier’s pay; du Croisier taught him his lesson, set him to track down the noble and beautiful boy through his better qualities, and sardonically prompted him to encourage his victim in his worst faults.  Fabien du Ronceret was a sophisticated youth, to whom such a mystification was attractive; he had precisely the keen brain and envious nature which finds in such a pursuit as this the absorbing amusement which a man of an ingenious turn lacks in the provinces.

In three years, between the ages of eighteen and one-and-twenty, Victurnien cost poor Chesnel nearly eighty thousand francs!  And this without the knowledge of Mlle. Armande or the Marquis.  More than half of the money had been spent in buying off lawsuits; the lad’s extravagance had squandered the rest.  Of the Marquis’ income of ten thousand livres, five thousand were necessary for the housekeeping; two thousand more represented Mlle. Armande’s allowance (parsimonious though she was) and the Marquis’ expenses.  The handsome young heir-presumptive, therefore, had not a hundred louis to spend.  And what sort of figure can a man make on two thousand livres?  Victurnien’s tailor’s bills alone absorbed his whole allowance.  He had his linen, his clothes,