Elsewhere can be found a steward who thought of this master’s interests as well as of his own. ("Un Debut dans la vie,” “Scenes de la vie privee.”) Gaubertin is the steward who thinks of himself only.  To represent the third figure of the problem would be to hold up to public admiration a very unlikely personage, yet one that was not unknown to the old nobility, though he has, alas! disappeared with them. (See “Le Cabinet des Antiques,” “Scenes de la vie de province.”) Through the endless subdivision of fortunes aristocratic habits and customs are inevitably changed.  If there be not now in France twenty great fortunes managed by intendants, in fifty years from now there will not be a hundred estates in the hands of stewards, unless a great change is made in the law.  Every land-owner will be brought by that time to look after his own interests.

This transformation, already begun, suggested the following answer of a clever woman when asked why, since 1830, she stayed in Paris during the summer.  “Because,” she said, “I do not care to visit chateaux which are now turned into farms.”  What is to be the future of this question, getting daily more and more imperative,—­that of man to man, the poor man and the rich man?  This book is written to throw some light upon that terrible social question.

It is easy to understand the perplexities which assailed the general after he had dismissed Gaubertin.  While saying to himself, vaguely, like other persons free to do or not to do a thing, “I’ll dismiss that scamp”; he had overlooked the risk and forgotten the explosion of his boiling anger,—­the anger of a choleric fire-eater at the moment when a flagrant imposition forced him to raise the lids of his wilfully blind eyes.

Montcornet, a land-owner for the first time and a denizen of Paris, had not provided himself with a steward before coming to Les Aigues; but after studying the neighborhood carefully he saw it was indispensable to a man like himself to have an intermediary to manage so many persons of low degree.

Gaubertin, who discovered during the excitement of the scene (which lasted more than two hours) the difficulties in which the general would soon be involved, jumped on his pony after leaving the room where the quarrel took place, and galloped to Soulanges to consult the Soudrys.  At his first words, “The general and I have parted; whom can we put in my place without his suspecting it?” the Soudrys understood their friend’s wishes.  Do not forget that Soudry, for the last seventeen years chief of police of the canton, was doubly shrewd through his wife, an adept in the particular wiliness of a waiting-maid of an Opera divinity.

“We may go far,” said Madame Soudry, “before we find any one to suit the place as well as our poor Sibilet.”

“Made to order!” exclaimed Gaubertin, still scarlet with mortification.  “Lupin,” he added, turning to the notary, who was present, “go to Ville-aux-Fayes and whisper it to Marechal, in case that big fire-eater asks his advice.”