“Yes, Marquis,” he was saying, “your son is wasting his time and his youth; you ought to send him to court.”

“I have always thought,” said the Marquis, “that if my great age prevents me from going to court—­where, between ourselves, I do not know what I should do among all these new people whom his Majesty receives, and all that is going on there—­that if I could not go myself, I could at least send my son to present our homage to His Majesty.  The King surely would do something for the Count—­give him a company, for instance, or a place in the Household, a chance, in short, for the boy to win his spurs.  My uncle the Archbishop suffered a cruel martyrdom; I have fought for the cause without deserting the camp with those who thought it their duty to follow the Princes.  I held that while the King was in France, his nobles should rally round him.—­Ah! well, no one gives us a thought; a Henry IV. would have written before now to the d’Esgrignons, ’Come to me, my friends; we have won the day!’—­After all, we are something better than the Troisvilles, yet here are two Troisvilles made peers of France; and another, I hear, represents the nobles in the Chamber.” (He took the upper electoral colleges for assemblies of his own order.) “Really, they think no more of us than if we did not exist.  I was waiting for the Princes to make their journey through this part of the world; but as the Princes do not come to us, we must go to the Princes.”

“I am enchanted to learn that you think of introducing our dear Victurnien into society,” the Chevalier put in adroitly.  “He ought not to bury his talents in a hole like this town.  The best fortune that he can look for here is to come across some Norman girl” (mimicking the accent), “country-bred, stupid, and rich.  What could he make of her?—­his wife?  Oh! good Lord!”

“I sincerely hope that he will defer his marriage until he has obtained some great office or appointment under the Crown,” returned the gray-haired Marquis.  “Still, there are serious difficulties in the way.”

And these were the only difficulties which the Marquis saw at the outset of his son’s career.

“My son, the Comte d’Esgrignon, cannot make his appearance at court like a tatterdemalion,” he continued after a pause, marked by a sigh; “he must be equipped.  Alas! for these two hundred years we have had no retainers.  Ah!  Chevalier, this demolition from top to bottom always brings me back to the first hammer stroke delivered by M. de Mirabeau.  The one thing needful nowadays is money; that is all that the Revolution has done that I can see.  The King does not ask you whether you are a descendant of the Valois or a conquerer of Gaul; he asks whether you pay a thousand francs in tailles which nobles never used to pay.  So I cannot well send the Count to court without a matter of twenty thousand crowns——­”

“Yes,” assented the Chevalier, “with that trifling sum he could cut a brave figure.”