“Very sad all this,” said young Riviere.

Dard took the little sneer for sympathy, and proceeded to “the cruellest wrong of all.”

“When I go into their kitchen to court Jacintha a bit, instead of finding a good supper there, which a man has a right to, courting a cook, if I don’t take one in my pocket, there is no supper, not to say supper, for either her or me.  I don’t call a salad and a bit of cheese-rind—­supper.  Beggars in silk and satin!  Every sou they have goes on to their backs, instead of into their bellies.”

“I have heard their income is much reduced,” said Edouard gently.

“Income!  I would not change with them if they’d throw me in half a pancake a day.  I tell you they are the poorest family for leagues round; not that they need be quite so starved, if they could swallow a little of their pride.  But no, they must have china and plate and fine linen at dinner; so their fine plates are always bare, and their silver trays empty.  Ask the butcher, if you don’t believe me.  Just you ask him whether he does not go three times to the smallest shopkeeper, for once he goes to Beaurepaire.  Their tenants send them a little meal and eggs, and now and then a hen; and their great garden is chock full of fruit and vegetables, and Jacintha makes me dig in it gratis; and so they muddle on.  But, bless your heart, coffee! they can’t afford it; so they roast a lot of horse-beans that cost nothing, and grind them, and serve up the liquor in a silver coffee-pot, on a silver salver.  Haw, haw, haw!”

“Is it possible? reduced to this?” said Edouard gravely.

“Don’t you be so weak as to pity them,” cried the remorseless plebeian.  “Why don’t they melt their silver into soup, and cut down their plate into rashers of bacon? why not sell the superfluous, and buy the needful, which it is grub?  And, above all, why don’t they let their old tumble-down palace to some rich grocer, and that accursed garden along with it, where I sweat gratis, and live small and comfortable, and pay honest men for their little odd jobs, and”—­

Here Riviere interrupted him, and asked if it was really true about the beans.

“True?” said Dard, “why, I have seen Rose doing it for the old woman’s breakfast:  it was Rose invented the move.  A girl of nineteen beginning already to deceive the world!  But they are all tarred with the same stick.  Down with the aristocrats!”

“Dard,” said Riviere, “you are a brute.”

“Me, citizen?” inquired Dard with every appearance of genuine surprise.

Edouard Riviere rose from his seat in great excitement.  Dard’s abuse of the family he was lately so bitter against had turned him right round.  He pitied the very baroness herself, and forgave her declining his visit.

“Be silent,” said he, “for shame!  There is such a thing as noble poverty; and you have described it.  I might have disdained these people in their prosperity, but I revere them in their affliction.  And I’ll tell you what, don’t you ever dare to speak slightly of them again in my presence, or”—­