pattern or a rosette in the middle.  The paint was old, startling in tint, and begrimed with smoke.  The sun had faded the heavy silk curtains in the drawing-room; the old-fashioned Beauvais tapestry which covered the white-painted furniture had lost all its color with wear.  A Louis Quinze clock on the chimney-piece stood between two extravagant, branched sconces filled with yellow wax candles, which the Presidente only lighted on occasions when the old-fashioned rock-crystal chandelier emerged from its green wrapper.  Three card-tables, covered with threadbare baize, and a backgammon box, sufficed for the recreations of the company; and Mme. du Ronceret treated them to such refreshments as cider, chestnuts, pastry puffs, glasses of eau sucree, and home-made orgeat.  For some time past she had made a practice of giving a party once a fortnight, when tea and some pitiable attempts at pastry appeared to grace the occasion.

Once a quarter the du Roncerets gave a grand three-course dinner, which made a great sensation in the town, a dinner served up in execrable ware, but prepared with the science for which the provincial cook is remarkable.  It was a Gargantuan repast, which lasted for six whole hours, and by abundance the President tried to vie with du Croisier’s elegance.

And so du Ronceret’s life and its accessories were just what might have been expected from his character and his false position.  He felt dissatisfied at home without precisely knowing what was the matter; but he dared not go to any expense to change existing conditions, and was only too glad to put by seven or eight thousand francs every year, so as to leave his son Fabien a handsome private fortune.  Fabien du Ronceret had no mind for the magistracy, the bar, or the civil service, and his pronounced turn for doing nothing drove his parent to despair.

On this head there was rivalry between the President and the Vice-President, old M. Blondet.  M. Blondet, for a long time past, had been sedulously cultivating an acquaintance between his son and the Blandureau family.  The Blandureaus were well-to-do linen manufacturers, with an only daughter, and it was on this daughter that the President had fixed his choice of a wife for Fabien.  Now, Joseph Blondet’s marriage with Mlle. Blandureau depended on his nomination to the post which his father, old Blondet, hoped to obtain for him when he himself should retire.  But President du Ronceret, in underhand ways, was thwarting the old man’s plans, and working indirectly upon the Blandureaus.  Indeed, if it had not been for this affair of young d’Esgrignon’s, the astute President might have cut them out, father and son, for their rivals were very much richer.