gloves, and perfumery from Paris.  He wanted a good English saddle-horse, a tilbury, and a second horse.  M. du Croisier had a tilbury and a thoroughbred.  Was the bourgeoisie to cut out the noblesse?  Then, the young Count must have a man in the d’Esgrignon livery.  He prided himself on setting the fashion among young men in the town and the department; he entered that world of luxuries and fancies which suit youth and good looks and wit so well.  Chesnel paid for it all, not without using, like ancient parliaments, the right of protest, albeit he spoke with angelic kindness.

“What a pity it is that so good a man should be so tiresome!” Victurnien would say to himself every time that the notary staunched some wound in his purse.

Chesnel had been left a widower, and childless; he had taken his old master’s son to fill the void in his heart.  It was a pleasure to him to watch the lad driving up the High Street, perched aloft on the box-seat of the tilbury, whip in hand, and a rose in his button-hole, handsome, well turned out, envied by every one.

Pressing need would bring Victurnien with uneasy eyes and coaxing manner, but steady voice, to the modest house in the Rue du Bercail; there had been losses at cards at the Troisvilles, or the Duc de Verneuil’s, or the prefecture, or the receiver-general’s, and the Count had come to his providence, the notary.  He had only to show himself to carry the day.

“Well, what is it, M. le Comte?  What has happened?” the old man would ask, with a tremor in his voice.

On great occasions Victurnien would sit down, assume a melancholy, pensive expression, and submit with little coquetries of voice and gesture to be questioned.  Then when he had thoroughly roused the old man’s fears (for Chesnel was beginning to fear how such a course of extravagance would end), he would own up to a peccadillo which a bill for a thousand francs would absolve.  Chesnel possessed a private income of some twelve thousand livres, but the fund was not inexhaustible.  The eighty thousand francs thus squandered represented his savings, accumulated for the day when the Marquis should send his son to Paris, or open negotiations for a wealthy marriage.

Chesnel was clear-sighted so long as Victurnien was not there before him.  One by one he lost the illusions which the Marquis and his sister still fondly cherished.  He saw that the young fellow could not be depended upon in the least, and wished to see him married to some modest, sensible girl of good birth, wondering within himself how a young man could mean so well and do so ill, for he made promises one day only to break them all on the next.