made famous by the efforts of the entire Liberal press. This same M.
Keller, moreover, was related by marriage to the Comte de Gondreville,

a Constitutional peer who remained in favor with Louis XVIII. For
these reasons, the Constitutional Opposition (as distinct from the

Liberal party) was always prepared to vote at the last moment, not for
the candidate whom they professed to support, but for du Croisier, if

that worthy could succeed in gaining a sufficient number of Royalist
votes; but at every election du Croisier was regularly thrown out by

the Royalists. The leaders of that party, taking their tone from the
Marquis d'Esgrignon, had pretty thoroughly fathomed and gauged their

man; and with each defeat, du Croisier and his party waxed more
bitter. Nothing so effectually stirs up strife as the failure of some

snare set with elaborate pains.
In 1822 there seemed to be a lull in hostilities which had been kept

up with great spirit during the first four years of the Restoration.
The salon du Croisier and the salon d'Esgrignon, having measured their

strength and weakness, were in all probabilitywaiting for
opportunity, that Providence of party strife. Ordinary persons were

content with the surface quiet which deceived the Government; but
those who knew du Croisier better, were well aware that the passion of

revenge in him, as in all men whose whole life consists in mental
activity, is implacable, especially when political ambitions are

involved. About this time du Croisier, who used to turn white and red
at the bare mention of d'Esgrignon or the Chevalier, and shuddered at

the name of the Collection of Antiquities, chose to wear the impassive
countenance of a savage. He smiled upon his enemies, hating them but

the more deeply, watching them the more narrowly from hour to hour.
One of his own party, who seconded him in these calculations of cold

wrath, was the President of the Tribunal, M. du Ronceret, a little
country squire, who had vainly endeavored to gain admittance among the

Antiquities.
The d'Esgrignons' little fortune, carefully administered by Maitre

Chesnel, was barely sufficient for the worthy Marquis' needs; for
though he lived without the slightest ostentation, he also lived like

a noble. The governor found by his Lordship the Bishop for the hope of
the house, the young Comte Victurnien d'Esgrignon, was an elderly

Oratorian who must be paid a certain salary, although he lived with
the family. The wages of a cook, a waiting-woman for Mlle. Armande, an

old valet for M. le Marquis, and a couple of other servants, together
with the daily expenses of the household, and the cost of an education

for which nothing was spared, absorbed the whole family income, in
spite of Mlle. Armande's economies, in spite of Chesnel's careful

management, and the servants' affection" target="_blank" title="n.友爱；慈爱">affection. As yet, Chesnel had not been
able to set about repairs at the ruined castle; he was waiting till

the leases fell in to raise the rent of the farms, for rents had been
rising lately, partly on account of improved methods of agriculture,

partly by the fall in the value of money, of which the landlord would
get the benefit at the expiration of leases granted in 1809.

The Marquis himself knew nothing of the details of the management of
the house or of his property. He would have been thunderstruck if he

had been told of the excessive precautions needed "to make both ends
of the year meet in December," to use the housewife's saying, and he

was so near the end of his life, that every one shrank from opening
his eyes. The Marquis and his adherents believed that a House, to

which no one at Court or in the Government gave a thought, a House
that was never heard of beyond the gates of the town, save here and

there in the same department, was about to revive its ancient
greatness, to shine forth in all its glory. The d'Esgrignons' line

should appear with renewed lustre in the person of Victurnien, just as
the despoiled nobles came into their own again, and the handsome heir

to a great estate would be in a position to go to Court, enter the
King's service, and marry (as other d'Esgrignons had done before him)

a Navarreins, a Cadignan, a d'Uxelles, a Beausant, a Blamont-Chauvry;
a wife, in short, who should unite all the distinctions of birth and

beauty, wit and wealth, and character.
The intimates who came to play their game of cards of an evening--the

Troisvilles (pronounced Treville), the La Roche-Guyons, the Casterans
(pronounced Cateran), and the Duc de Verneuil--had all so long been

accustomed to look up to the Marquis as a person of immense
consequence, that they encouraged him in such notions as these. They

were perfectlysincere in their belief; and indeed, it would have been
well founded if they could have wiped out the history of the last

forty years. But the most honorable and undoubted sanctions of right,
such as Louis XVIII. had tried to set on record when he dated the

Charter from the one-and-twentieth year of his reign, only exist when
ratified by the general consent. The d'Esgrignons not only lacked the

very rudiments of the language of latter-day politics, to wit, money,
the great modern RELIEF, or sufficient rehabilitation of nobility;

but, in their case, too, "historical continuity" was lacking, and that
is a kind of renown which tells quite as much at Court as on the

battlefield, in diplomatic circles as in Parliament, with a book, or
in connection with an adventure; it is, as it were, a sacred ampulla

poured upon the heads of each successivegeneration. Whereas a noble
family, inactive and forgotten, is very much in the position of a

hard-featured, poverty-stricken, simple-minded, and virtuous maid,
these qualifications being the four cardinal points of misfortune. The

marriage of a daughter of the Troisvilles with General Montcornet, so
far from opening the eyes of the Antiquities, very nearly brought

about a rupture between the Troisvilles and the salon d'Esgrignon, the
latter declaring that the Troisvilles were mixing themselves up with

all sorts of people.
There was one, and one only, among all these folk who did not share

their illusions. And that one, needless to say, was Chesnel the
notary. Although his devotion, sufficiently proved already, was simply

unbounded for the great house now reduced to three persons; although
he accepted all their ideas, and thought them nothing less than right,

he had too much common sense, he was too good a man of business to
more than half the families in the department, to miss the

significance of the great changes that were taking place in people's
minds, or to be blind to the different conditions brought about by

industrial development and modern manners. He had watched the
Revolution pass through the violent phase of 1793, when men, women,

and children wore arms, and heads fell on the scaffold, and victories
were won in pitched battles with Europe; and now he saw the same

forces quietly at work in men's minds, in the shape of ideas which
sanctioned the issues. The soil had been cleared, the seed sown, and

now came the harvest. To his thinking, the Revolution had formed the
mind of the younger generation; he touched the hard facts, and knew

that although there were countless unhealed wounds, what had been done
was past recall. The death of a king on the scaffold, the protracted

agony of a queen, the division of the nobles' lands, in his eyes were
so many binding contracts; and where so many vested interests were

involved, it was not likely that those concerned would allow them to
be attacked. Chesnel saw clearly. His fanatical attachment to the

d'Esgrignons was whole-hearted, but it was not blind, and it was all
the fairer for this. The young monk's faith that sees heaven laid open

and beholds the angels, is something far below the power of the old
monk who points them out to him. The ex-steward was like the old monk;

he would have given his life to defend a worm-eaten shrine.
He tried to explain the "innovations" to his old master, using a

thousand tactful precautions; sometimes speaking jestingly, sometimes
affecting surprise or sorrow over this or that; but he always met the

same prophetic smile on the Marquis' lips, the same fixed conviction
in the Marquis' mind, that these follies would go by like others.

Events contributed in a way which has escaped attention to assist such
noble champions of forlorn hope to cling to their superstitions. What

could Chesnel do when the old Marquis said, with a lordly gesture,
"God swept away Bonaparte with his armies, his new great vassals, his

crowned kings, and his vast conceptions! God will deliver us from the
rest." And Chesnel hung his head sadly, and did not dare to answer,

"It cannot be God's will to sweep away France." Yet both of them were
grand figures; the one, standing out against the torrent of facts like

an ancient block of lichen-covered granite, still upright in the
depths of an Alpine gorge; the other, watching the course of the flood

to turn it to account. Then the good gray-headed notary would groan
over the irreparable havoc which the superstitions were sure to work

in the mind, the habits, and ideas of the Comte Victurnien
d'Esgrignon.

Idolized by his father, idolized by his aunt, the young heir was a
spoilt child in every sense of the word; but still a spoilt child who

justified paternal and maternal illusions. Maternal, be it said, for
Victurnien's aunt was truly a mother to him; and yet, however careful