cup of coffee.  His old housekeeper had just taken away the tray which had been used for the purpose for the last twenty years.  He was waiting for his clerks to go before he himself went out for his game at cards, and meanwhile he was thinking —­no need to ask of whom or what.  A day seldom passed but he asked himself, “Where is he?  What is he doing?” He thought that the Count was in Italy with the fair Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.

When every franc of a man’s fortune has come to him, not by inheritance, but through his own earning and saving, it is one of his sweetest pleasures to look back upon the pains that have gone to the making of it, and then to plan out a future for his crowns.  This it is to conjugate the verb “to enjoy” in every tense.  And the old lawyer, whose affections were all bound up in a single attachment, was thinking that all the carefully-chosen, well-tilled land which he had pinched and scraped to buy would one day go to round the d’Esgrignon estates, and the thought doubled his pleasure.  His pride swelled as he sat at his ease in the old armchair; and the building of glowing coals, which he raised with the tongs, sometimes seemed to him to be the old noble house built up again, thanks to his care.  He pictured the young Count’s prosperity, and told himself that he had done well to live for such an aim.  Chesnel was not lacking in intelligence; sheer goodness was not the sole source of his great devotion; he had a pride of his own; he was like the nobles who used to rebuild a pillar in a cathedral to inscribe their name upon it; he meant his name to be remembered by the great house which he had restored.  Future generations of d’Esgrignons should speak of old Chesnel.  Just at this point his old housekeeper came in with signs of alarm in her countenance.

“Is the house on fire, Brigitte?”

“Something of the sort,” said she.  “Here is M. du Croisier wanting to speak to you——­”

“M. du Croisier,” repeated the old lawyer.  A stab of cold misgiving gave him so sharp a pang at the heart that he dropped the tongs.  “M. du Croisier here!” thought he, “our chief enemy!”

Du Croisier came in at that moment, like a cat that scents milk in a dairy.  He made a bow, seated himself quietly in the easy-chair which the lawyer brought forward, and produced a bill for two hundred and twenty-seven thousand francs, principal and interest, the total amount of sums advanced to M. Victurnien in bills of exchange drawn upon du Croisier, and duly honored by him.  Of these, he now demanded immediate payment, with a threat of proceeding to extremities with the heir-presumptive of the house.  Chesnel turned the unlucky letters over one by one, and asked the enemy to keep the secret.  This he engaged to do if he were paid within forty-eight hours.  He was pressed for money he had obliged various manufacturers; and there followed a series of the financial fictions by which neither notaries nor borrowers are deceived.