As soon as all these facts came to the ears of little Polydore de la Baudraye—­for they were the talk of every circle in the Department of the Cher—­he went to Bourges just when Madame Piedefer, a devotee at high services, had almost made up her own mind and her daughter’s to take the first comer with well-lined pockets—­the first chien coiffe, as they say in Le Berry.  And if the Cardinal was delighted to receive Monsieur de la Baudraye, Monsieur de la Baudraye was even better pleased to receive a wife from the hands of the Cardinal.  The little gentleman only demanded of His Eminence a formal promise to support his claims with the President of the Council to enable him to recover his debts from the Duc de Navarreins “and others” by a lien on their indemnities.  This method, however, seemed to the able Minister then occupying the Pavillon Marsan rather too sharp practice, and he gave the vine-owner to understand that his business should be attended to all in good time.

It is easy to imagine the excitement produced in the Sancerre district by the news of Monsieur de la Baudraye’s imprudent marriage.

“It is quite intelligible,” said President Boirouge; “the little man was very much startled, as I am told, at hearing that handsome young Milaud, the Attorney-General’s deputy at Nevers, say to Monsieur de Clagny as they were looking at the turrets of La Baudraye, ’That will be mine some day.’—­’But,’ says Clagny, ’he may marry and have children.’—­’Impossible!’—­So you may imagine how such a changeling as little La Baudraye must hate that colossal Milaud.”

There was at Nevers a plebeian branch of the Milauds, which had grown so rich in the cutlery trade that the present representative of that branch had been brought up to the civil service, in which he had enjoyed the patronage of Marchangy, now dead.

It will be as well to eliminate from this story, in which moral developments play the principal part, the baser material interests which alone occupied Monsieur de la Baudraye, by briefly relating the results of his negotiations in Paris.  This will also throw light on certain mysterious phenomena of contemporary history, and the underground difficulties in matters of politics which hampered the Ministry at the time of the Restoration.

The promises of Ministers were so illusory that Monsieur de la Baudraye determined on going to Paris at the time when the Cardinal’s presence was required there by the sitting of the Chambers.

This is how the Duc de Navarreins, the principal debtor threatened by Monsieur de la Baudraye, got out of the scrape.

The country gentleman, lodging at the Hotel de Mayence, Rue Saint-Honore, near the Place Vendome, one morning received a visit from a confidential agent of the Ministry, who was an expert in “winding up” business.  This elegant personage, who stepped out of an elegant cab, and was dressed in the most elegant style, was requested to walk up to No. 3—­that is to say, to the third floor, to a small room where he found his provincial concocting a cup of coffee over his bedroom fire.