Chesnel, good man, was breakfasting with the family.  He took no part in counsels based on heraldry, nor in the inditing of letters addressed to divers mighty personages of the day; but he had spent the night in writing to an old friend of his, one of the oldest established notaries of Paris.  Without this letter it is not possible to understand Chesnel’s real and assumed fatherhood.  It almost recalls Daedalus’ address to Icarus; for where, save in old mythology, can you look for comparisons worthy of this man of antique mould?

“My dear and Estimable Sorbier,—­I remember with no little pleasure that I made my first campaign in our honorable profession under your father, and that you had a liking for me, poor little clerk that I was.  And now I appeal to old memories of the days when we worked in the same office, old pleasant memories for our hearts, to ask you to do me the one service that I have ever asked of you in the course of our long lives, crossed as they have been by political catastrophes, to which, perhaps, I owe it that I have the honor to be your colleague.  And now I ask this service of you, my friend, and my white hairs will be brought with sorrow to the grave if you should refuse my entreaty.  It is no question of myself or of mine, Sorbier, for I lost poor Mme. Chesnel, and I have no child of my own.  Something more to me than my own family (if I had one) is involved—­it is the Marquis d’Esgrignon’s only son.  I have had the honor to be the Marquis’ land steward ever since I left the office to which his father sent me at his own expense, with the idea of providing for me.  The house which nurtured me has passed through all the troubles of the Revolution.  I have managed to save some of their property; but what is it, after all, in comparison with the wealth that they have lost?  I cannot tell you, Sorbier, how deeply I am attached to the great house, which has been all but swallowed up under my eyes by the abyss of time.  M. le Marquis was proscribed, and his lands confiscated, he was getting on in years, he had no child.  Misfortunes upon misfortunes!  Then M. le Marquis married, and his wife died when the young Count was born, and to-day this noble, dear, and precious child is all the life of the d’Esgrignon family; the fate of the house hangs upon him.  He has got into debt here with amusing himself.  What else should he do in the provinces with an allowance of a miserable hundred louis?  Yes, my friend, a hundred louis, the great house has come to this.

“In this extremity his father thinks it necessary to send the Count to Paris to ask for the King’s favor at court.  Paris is a very dangerous place for a lad; if he is to keep steady there, he must have the grain of sense which makes notaries of us.  Besides, I should be heartbroken to think of the poor boy living amid such hardships as we have known.—­Do you remember the pleasure with which we spent a day and a night there waiting