and accompany, after a fashion, a woman who consented after much
pressing to sing a balladlearned by heart in a month of hard

practice. Incapable though he was of any feeling for poetry, he would
boldly ask permission to retire for ten minutes to compose an

impromptu, and return with a quatrain, flat as a pancake, wherein
rhyme did duty for reason. M. du Chatelet had besides a very pretty

talent for filling in the ground of the Princess' worsted work after
the flowers had been begun; he held her skeins of silk with infinite

grace, entertained her with dubious nothings more or less
transparently veiled. He was ignorant of painting, but he could copy a

landscape, sketch a head in profile, or design a costume and color it.
He had, in short, all the little talents that a man could turn to such

useful account in times when women exercised more influence in public
life than most people imagine. Diplomacy he claimed to be his strong

point; it usually is with those who have no knowledge, and are
profound by reason of their emptiness; and, indeed, this kind of skill

possesses one signal advantage, for it can only be displayed in the
conduct of the affairs of the great, and when discretion is the

quality required, a man who knows nothing can safely say nothing, and
take refuge in a mysterious shake of the head; in fact; the cleverest

practitioner is he who can swim with the current and keep his head
well above the stream of events which he appears to control, a man's

fitness for this business varying inversely as his specific gravity.
But in this particular art or craft, as in all others, you shall find

a thousand mediocrities for one man of genius; and in spite of
Chatelet's services, ordinary and extraordinary, Her Imperial Highness

could not procure a seat in the Privy Council for her private
secretary; not that he would not have made a delightful Master of

Requests, like many another, but the Princess was of the opinion that
her secretary was better placed with her than anywhere else in the

world. He was made a Baron, however, and went to Cassel as envoy-
extraordinary, no empty form of words, for he cut a very extraordinary

figure there--Napoleon used him as a diplomaticcourier in the thick
of a European crisis. Just as he had been promised the post of

minister to Jerome in Westphalia, the Empire fell to pieces; and
balked of his ambassade de famille as he called it, he went off in

despair to Egypt with General de Montriveau. A strange chapter of
accidents separated him from his traveling companion, and for two long

years Sixte du Chatelet led a wandering life among the Arab tribes of
the desert, who sold and resold their captive--his talents being not

of the slightest use to the nomad tribes. At length, about the time
that Montriveau reached Tangier, Chatelet found himself in the

territory of the Imam of Muscat, had the luck to find an English
vessel just about to set sail, and so came back to Paris a year sooner

than his sometimecompanion. Once in Paris, his recent misfortunes,
and certain connections of long standing, together with services

rendered to great persons now in power, recommended him to the
President of the Council, who put him in M. de Barante's department

until such time as a controllership should fall vacant. So the part
that M. du Chatelet once had played in the history of the Imperial

Princess, his reputation for success with women, the strange story of
his travels and sufferings, all awakened the interest of the ladies of

Angouleme.
M. le Baron Sixte du Chatelet informed himself as to the manners and

customs of the upper town, and took his cue accordingly. He appeared
on the scene as a jaded man of the world, broken in health, and weary

in spirit. He would raise his hand to his forehead at all seasons, as
if pain never gave him a moment's respite, a habit that recalled his

travels and made him interesting. He was on visiting terms with the
authorities--the general in command, the prefect, the receiver-

general, and the bishop but in every house he was frigid, polite, and
slightly supercilious, like a man out of his proper place awaiting the

favors of power. His social talents he left to conjecture, nor did
they lose anything in reputation on that account; then when people

began to talk about him and wish to know him, and curiosity was still
lively; when he had reconnoitred the men and found them nought, and

studied the women with the eyes of experience in the cathedral for
several Sundays, he saw that Mme. de. Bargeton was the person with

whom it would be best to be on intimate terms. Music, he thought,
should open the doors of a house where strangers were never received.

Surreptitiously he procured one of Miroir's Masses, learned it upon
the piano; and one fine Sunday when all Angouleme went to the

cathedral, he played the organ, sent those who knew no better into
ecstasies over the performance, and stimulated the interest felt in

him by allowing his name to slip out through the attendants. As he
came out after mass, Mme. de Bargeton complimented him, regretting

that she had no opportunity of playing duets with such a musician; and
naturally, during an interview of her own seeking, he received the

passport, which he could not have obtained if he had asked for it.
So the adroit Baron was admitted to the circle of the queen of

Angouleme, and paid her marked attention. The elderly beau--he was
forty-five years old--saw that all her youth lay dormant and ready to

revive, saw treasures to be turned to account, and possibly a rich
widow to wed, to say nothing of expectations; it would be a marriage

into the family of Negrepelisse, and for him this meant a family
connection with the Marquise d'Espard, and a political career in

Paris. Here was a fair tree to cultivate in spite of the ill-omened,
unsightly mistletoe that grew thick upon it; he would hang his

fortunes upon it, and prune it, and wait till he could gather its
golden fruit.

High-born Angouleme shrieked against the introduction of a Giaour into
the sanctuary, for Mme. de Bargeton's salon was a kind of holy of

holies in a society that kept itself unspotted from the world. The
only outsider intimate there was the bishop; the prefect was admitted

twice or thrice in a year, the receiver-general was never received at
all; Mme. de Bargeton would go to concerts and "at homes" at his

house, but she never accepted invitations to dinner. And now, she who
had declined to open her doors to the receiver-general, welcomed a

mere controller of excise! Here was a novel order of precedence for
snubbed authority; such a thing it had never entered their minds to

conceive.
Those who by dint of mental effort can understand a kind of pettiness

which, for that matter, can be found on any and every social level,
will realize the awe with which the bourgeoisie of Angouleme regarded

the Hotel de Bargeton. The inhabitant of L'Houmeau beheld the grandeur
of that miniature Louvre, the glory of the Angoumoisin Hotel de

Rambouillet, shining at a solar distance; and yet, within it there was
gathered together all the direst intellectualpoverty, all the decayed

gentility from twenty leagues round about.
Political opinion expanded itself in wordy commonplaces vociferated

with emphasis; the Quotidienne was comparatively Laodicean in its
loyalty, and Louis XVIII. a Jacobin. The women, for the most part,

were awkward, silly, insipid, and ill dressed; there was always
something amiss that spoiled the whole; nothing in them was complete,

toilette or talk, flesh or spirit. But for his designs on Mme. de
Bargeton, Chatelet could not have endured the society. And yet the

manners and spirit of the noble in his ruined manor-house, the
knowledge of the traditions of good breeding,--these things covered a

multitude of deficiencies. Nobility of feeling was far more real here
than in the lofty world of Paris. You might compare these country

Royalists, if the metaphor may be allowed, to old-fashioned silver
plate, antiquated and tarnished, but weighty; their attachment" target="_blank" title="n.附着；附件；爱慕">attachment to the

House of Bourbon as the House of Bourbon did them honor. The very
fixity of their political opinions was a sort of faithfulness. The

distance that they set between themselves and the bourgeoisie, their
very exclusiveness, gave them a certain elevation, and enhanced their

value. Each noble represented a certain price for the townsmen, as
Bambara Negroes, we are told, attach a money value to cowrie shells.

Some of the women, flattered by M. du Chatelet, discerned in him the
superior qualities lacking in the men of their own sect, and the

insurrection of self-love was pacified. These ladies all hoped to
succeed to the Imperial Highness. Purists were of the opinion that you

might see the intruder in Mme. de Bargeton's house, but not elsewhere.
Du Chatelet was fain to put up with a good deal of insolence, but he

held his ground by cultivating the clergy. He encouraged the queen of
Angouleme in foibles bred of the soil; he brought her all the newest

books; he read aloud the poetry that appeared. Together they went into
ecstasies over these poets; she in all sincerity, he with suppressed