But there is never any good to be expected of young men who confess their sins and repent, and straightway fall into them again.  A man of strong character only confesses his faults to himself, and punishes himself for them; as for the weak, they drop back into the old ruts when they find that the bank is too steep to climb.  The springs of pride which lie in a great man’s secret soul had been slackened in Victurnien.  With such guardians as he had, such company as he kept, such a life as he led, he had suddenly became an enervated voluptuary at that turning-point in his life when a man most stands in need of the harsh discipline of misfortune and adversity which formed a Prince Eugene, a Frederick II., a Napoleon.  Chesnel saw that Victurnien possessed that uncontrollable appetite for enjoyments which should be the prerogative of men endowed with giant powers; the men who feel the need of counterbalancing their gigantic labors by pleasures which bring one-sided mortals to the pit.

At times the good man stood aghast; then, again, some profound sally, some sign of the lad’s remarkable range of intellect, would reassure him.  He would say, as the Marquis said at the rumor of some escapade, “Boys will be boys.”  Chesnel had spoken to the Chevalier, lamenting the young lord’s propensity for getting into debt; but the Chevalier manipulated his pinch of snuff, and listened with a smile of amusement.

“My dear Chesnel, just explain to me what a national debt is,” he answered.  “If France has debts, egad! why should not Victurnien have debts?  At this time and at all times princes have debts, every gentleman has debts.  Perhaps you would rather that Victurnien should bring you his savings?—­Do you know that our great Richelieu (not the Cardinal, a pitiful fellow that put nobles to death, but the Marechal), do you know what he did once when his grandson the Prince de Chinon, the last of the line, let him see that he had not spent his pocket-money at the University?”

“No, M. le Chevalier.”

“Oh, well; he flung the purse out of the window to a sweeper in the courtyard, and said to his grandson, ’Then they do not teach you to be a prince here?’”

Chesnel bent his head and made no answer.  But that night, as he lay awake, he thought that such doctrines as these were fatal in times when there was one law for everybody, and foresaw the first beginnings of the ruin of the d’Esgrignons.

But for these explanations which depict one side of provincial life in the time of the Empire and the Restoration, it would not be easy to understand the opening scene of this history, an incident which took place in the great salon one evening towards the end of October 1822.  The card-tables were forsaken, the Collection of Antiquities—­elderly nobles, elderly countesses, young marquises, and simple baronesses —­had settled their losses and winnings.  The master of the house was pacing up and down the room, while Mlle. Armande was putting out the candles on the card-tables.  He was not taking exercise alone, the Chevalier was with him, and the two wrecks of the eighteenth century were talking of Victurnien.  The Chevalier had undertaken to broach the subject with the Marquis.