Victurnien found his relatives both amiable and ready to welcome him so long as he did not appear as a suppliant; he saw at once that the surest way of obtaining nothing was to ask for something.  At Paris, if the first impulse moves people to protect, second thoughts (which last a good deal longer) impel them to despise the protege.  Independence, vanity, and pride, all the young Count’s better and worse feelings combined, led him, on the contrary, to assume an aggressive attitude.  And therefore the Ducs de Verneuil, de Lenoncourt, de Chaulieu, de Navarreins, d’Herouville, de Grandlieu, and de Maufrigneuse, the Princes de Cadignan and de Blamont-Chauvry, were delighted to present the charming survivor of the wreck of an ancient family at court.

Victurnien went to the Tuileries in a splendid carriage with his armorial bearings on the panels; but his presentation to His Majesty made it abundantly clear to him that the people occupied the royal mind so much that his nobility was like to be forgotten.  The restored dynasty, moreover, was surrounded by triple ranks of eligible old men and gray-headed courtiers; the young noblesse was reduced to a cipher, and this Victurnien guessed at once.  He saw that there was no suitable place for him at court, nor in the government, nor the army, nor, indeed, anywhere else.  So he launched out into the world of pleasure.  Introduced at the Elyess-Bourbon, at the Duchesse d’Angouleme’s, at the Pavillon Marsan, he met on all sides with the surface civilities due to the heir of an old family, not so old but it could be called to mind by the sight of a living member.  And, after all, it was not a small thing to be remembered.  In the distinction with which Victurnien was honored lay the way to the peerage and a splendid marriage; he had taken the field with a false appearance of wealth, and his vanity would not allow him to declare his real position.  Besides, he had been so much complimented on the figure that he made, he was so pleased with his first success, that, like many other young men, he felt ashamed to draw back.  He took a suite of rooms in the Rue du Bac, with stables and a complete equipment for the fashionable life to which he had committed himself.  These preliminaries cost him fifty thousand francs, which money, moreover, the young gentleman managed to draw in spite of all Chesnel’s wise precautions, thanks to a series of unforeseen events.

Chesnel’s letter certainly reached his friend’s office, but Maitre Sorbier was dead; and Mme. Sorbier, a matter-of-fact person, seeing it was a business letter, handed it on to her husband’s successor.  Maitre Cardot, the new notary, informed the young Count that a draft on the Treasury made payable to the deceased would be useless; and by way of reply to the letter, which had cost the old provincial notary so much thought, Cardot despatched four lines intended not to reach Chesnel’s heart, but to produce the money.  Chesnel made the draft payable to Sorbier’s young successor; and the latter, feeling but little inclination to adopt his correspondent’s sentimentality, was delighted to put himself at the Count’s orders, and gave Victurnien as much money as he wanted.