“That’s a singular thing,” said Cerizet, stiffly.  “After your agreement with me, I certainly did not expect such a result as this.”

“How can I help it, my dear fellow?  I agreed with you, barring amendments on the other side; I wasn’t able to give another turn to the affair.  In her natural character as a managing woman and a sample of perpetual motion, Brigitte has reflected that she might as well manage that house herself and put into her own pocket the profits you proposed to make.  I said all I could about the cares and annoyances which she would certainly saddle upon herself.  ‘Oh! nonsense!’ she said; ‘they’ll stir my blood and do my health good!’”

“It is pitiable!” said Cerizet.  “That poor old maid will never know which end to take hold of; she doesn’t imagine what it is to have an empty house, and which must be filled with tenants from garret to cellar.”

“I plied her with all those arguments,” replied la Peyrade; “but I couldn’t move her resolution.  Don’t you see, my dear democrats, you stirred up the revolution of ’89; you thought to make a fine speculation in dethroning the noble by the bourgeois, and the end of it is you are shoved out yourselves.  This looks like paradox; but you’ve found out now that the peasant and clodhopper isn’t malleable; he can’t be forced down and kept under like the noble.  The aristocracy, on behalf of its dignity, would not condescend to common cares, and was therefore dependent on a crowd of plebeian servitors to whom it had to trust for three-fourths of the actions of its own life.  That was the reign of stewards and bailiffs, wily fellows, into whose hands the interests of the great families passed, and who fed and grew fat on the parings of the great fortunes they managed.  But now-a-days, utilitarian theories, as they call them, have come to the fore,—­’We are never so well served as by ourselves,’ ’There’s no shame in attending to one’s own business,’ and many other bourgeois maxims which have suppressed the role of intermediaries.  Why shouldn’t Mademoiselle Brigitte Thuillier manage her own house when dukes and peers go in person to the Bourse, where such men sign their own leases and read the deeds before they sign them, and go themselves to the notary, whom, in former days, they considered a servant.”

During this time Cerizet had time to recover from the blow he had just received squarely in the face, and to think of the transition he had to make from one set of interests to the other, of which he was now the agent.

“What you are declaiming there is all very clever,” he said, carelessly, “but the thing that proves to me our defeat is the fact that you are not on the terms with Mademoiselle Thuillier you would have us believe you are.  She is slipping through your fingers; and I don’t think that marriage is anything like as certain as Dutocq and I have been fancying it was.”

“Well, no doubt,” said la Peyrade, “there are still some touches to be given to our sketch, but I believe it is well under way.”