“Well,” said Mlle. Armande, “I have asked Chesnel to come to-night.  Would you believe it, Chevalier, ever since the day when Chesnel proposed that I should marry that miserable du Croisier——­”

“Ah! that was truly unworthy, mademoiselle!” cried the Chevalier.

“Unpardonable!” said the Marquis.

“Well, since then my brother has never brought himself to ask anything whatsoever of Chesnel,” continued Mlle. Armande.

“Of your old household servant?  Why, Marquis, you would do Chesnel honor—­an honor which he would gratefully remember till his latest breath.”

“No,” said the Marquis, “the thing is beneath one’s dignity, it seems to me.”

“There is not much question of dignity; it is a matter of necessity,” said the Chevalier, with the trace of a shrug.

“Never,” said the Marquis, riposting with a gesture which decided the Chevalier to risk a great stroke to open his old friend’s eyes.

“Very well,” he said, “since you do not know it, I will tell you myself that Chesnel has let your son have something already, something like——­”

“My son is incapable of accepting anything whatever from Chesnel,” the Marquis broke in, drawing himself up as he spoke.  “He might have come to you to ask you for twenty-five louis——­”

“Something like a hundred thousand livres,” said the Chevalier, finishing his sentence.

“The Comte d’Esgrignon owes a hundred thousand livres to a Chesnel!” cried the Marquis, with every sign of deep pain.  “Oh! if he were not an only son, he should set out to-night for Mexico with a captain’s commission.  A man may be in debt to money-lenders, they charge a heavy interest, and you are quits; that is right enough; but Chesnel! a man to whom one is attached!——­”

“Yes, our adorable Victurnien has run through a hundred thousand livres, dear Marquis,” resumed the Chevalier, flicking a trace of snuff from his waistcoat; “it is not much, I know.  I myself at his age——­ But, after all, let us let old memories be, Marquis.  The Count is living in the provinces; all things taken into consideration, it is not so much amiss.  He will not go far; these irregularities are common in men who do great things afterwards——­”

“And he is sleeping upstairs, without a word of this to his father,” exclaimed the Marquis.

“Sleeping innocently as a child who has merely got five or six little bourgeoises into trouble, and now must have duchesses,” returned the Chevalier.

“Why, he deserves a lettre de cachet!”

“‘They’ have done away with lettres de cachet,” said the Chevalier.  “You know what a hubbub there was when they tried to institute a law for special cases.  We could not keep the provost’s courts, which M. de Bonaparte used to call commissions militaires.”

“Well, well; what are we to do if our boys are wild, or turn out scapegraces?  Is there no locking them up in these days?” asked the Marquis.