compliments, of which he was stingy, won the good graces of all the
old women; he made himself agreeable to every one, even to the

officials of the government, from whom he wanted nothing. His behavior
at cards had a lofty distinction which everybody noticed: he never

complained; he praised his adversaries when they lost; he did not
rebuke or teach his partners by showing them how they ought to have

played. When, in the course of a deal, those sickening dissertations
on the game would take place, the chevalier invariably drew out his

snuff-box with a gesture that was worthy of Mole, looked at the
Princess Goritza, raised the cover with dignity, shook, sifted, massed

the snuff, and gathered his pinch, so that by the time the cards were
dealt he had decorated both nostrils and replaced the princess in his

waistcoat pocket,--always on his left side. A gentleman of the "good"
century (in distinction from the "grand" century) could alone have

invented that compromise between contemptuous silence and a sarcasm
which might not have been understood. He accepted poor players and

knew how to make the best of them. His delightful equability of temper
made many persons say,--

"I do admire the Chevalier de Valois!"
His conversation, his manners, seemed bland, like his person. He

endeavored to shock neither man nor woman. Indulgent to defects both
physical and mental, he listened patiently (by the help of the

Princess Goritza) to the many dull people who related to him the petty
miseries of provincial life,--an egg ill-boiled for breakfast, coffee

with feathered cream, burlesque details about health, disturbed sleep,
dreams, visits. The chevalier could call up a languishing look, he

could take on a classic attitude to feign compassion, which made him a
most valuablelistener; he could put in an "Ah!" and a "Bah!" and a

"What DID you do?" with charming appropriateness. He died without any
one suspecting him of even an allusion to the tender passages of his

romance with the Princess Goritza. Has any one ever reflected on the
service a dead sentiment can do to society; how love may become both

social and useful? This will serve to explain why, in spite of his
constant winning at play (he never left a salon without carrying off

with him about six francs), the old chevalier remained the spoilt
darling of the town. His losses--which, by the bye, he always

proclaimed, were very rare.
All who know him declare that they have never met, not even in the

Egyptian museum at Turin, so agreeable a mummy. In no country in the
world did parasitism ever take on so pleasant a form. Never did

selfishness of a most concentrated kind appear less forth-putting,
less offensive, than in this old gentleman; it stood him in place of

devoted friendship. If some one asked Monsieur de Valois to do him a
little service which might have discommoded him, that some one did not

part from the worthy chevalier without being truly enchanted with him,
and quite convinced that he either could not do the service demanded,

or that he should injure the affair if he meddled in it.
To explain the problematic existence of the chevalier, the historian,

whom Truth, that cruel wanton, grasps by the throat, is compelled to
say that after the "glorious" sad days of July, Alencon discovered

that the chevalier's nightlywinnings amounted to about one hundred
and fifty francs every three months; and that the clever old nobleman

had had the pluck to send to himself his annuity in order not to
appear in the eyes of a community, which loves the main chance, to be

entirely without resources. Many of his friends (he was by that time
dead, you will please remark) have contested mordicus this curious

fact, declaring it to be a fable, and upholding the Chevalier de
Valois as a respectable and worthy gentleman whom the liberals

calumniated. Luckily for shrewd players, there are people to be found
among the spectators who will always sustain them. Ashamed of having

to defend a piece of wrong-doing, they stoutly deny it. Do not accuse
them of wilful infatuation; such men have a sense of their dignity;

governments set them the example of a virtue which consists in burying
their dead without chanting the Misere of their defeats. If the

chevalier did allow himself this bit of shrewd practice,--which, by
the bye, would have won him the regard of the Chevalier de Gramont, a

smile from the Baron de Foeneste, a shake of the hand from the Marquis
de Moncade,--was he any the less that amiable guest, that witty

talker, that imperturbable card-player, that famous teller of
anecdotes, in whom all Alencon took delight? Besides, in what way was

this action, which is certainly within the rights of a man's own will,
--in what way was it contrary to the ethics of a gentleman? When so

many persons are forced to pay annuities to others, what more natural
than to pay one to his own best friend? But Laius is dead--

To return to the period of which we are writing: after about fifteen
years of this way of life the chevalier had amassed ten thousand and

some odd hundred francs. On the return of the Bourbons, one of his old
friends, the Marquis de Pombreton, formerlylieutenant in the Black

mousquetaires, returned to him--so he said--twelve hundred pistoles
which he had lent to the marquis for the purpose of emigrating. This

event made a sensation; it was used later to refute the sarcasms of
the "Constitutionnel," on the method employed by some emigres in

paying their debts. When this noble act of the Marquis de Pombreton
was lauded before the chevalier, the good man reddened even to his

right cheek. Every one rejoiced frankly at this windfall for Monsieur
de Valois, who went about consulting moneyed people as to the safest

manner of investing this fragment of his past opulence. Confiding in
the future of the Restoration, he finally placed his money on the

Grand-Livre at the moment when the funds were at fifty-six francs and
twenty-five centimes. Messieurs de Lenoncourt, de Navarreins, de

Verneuil, de Fontaine, and La Billardiere, to whom he was known, he
said, obtained for him, from the king's privy purse, a pension of

three hundred francs, and sent him, moreover, the cross of Saint-
Louis. Never was it known positively by what means the old chevalier

obtained these two solemn consecrations of his title and merits. But
one thing is certain; the cross of Saint-Louis authorized him to take

the rank of retiredcolonel in view of his service in the Catholic
armies of the West.

Besides his fiction of an annuity, about which no one at the present
time knew anything, the chevalier really had, therefore, a bona fide

income of a thousand francs. But in spite of this bettering of his
circumstances, he made no change in his life, manners, or appearance,

except that the red ribbon made a fine effect on his maroon-colored
coat, and completed, so to speak, the physiognomy of a gentleman.

After 1802, the chevalier sealed his letters with a very old seal,
ill-engraved to be sure, by which the Casterans, the d'Esgrignons, the

Troisvilles were enabled to see that he bore: Party of France, two
cottises gemelled gules, and gules, five mascles or, placed end to

end; on a chief sable, a cross argent. For crest, a knight's helmet.
For motto: "Valeo." Bearing such noble arms, the so-calledbastard of

the Valois had the right to get into all the royal carriages of the
world.

Many persons envied the quiet existence of this old bachelor, spent on
whist, boston, backgammon, reversi, and piquet, all well played, on

dinners well digested, snuff gracefully inhaled, and tranquil walks
about the town. Nearly all Alencon believed this life to be exempt

from ambitions and serious interests; but no man has a life as simple
as envious neighbors attribute to him. You will find in the most out-

of-the way villages human mollusks, creatures apparently dead, who
have passions for lepidoptera or for conchology, let us say,--beings

who will give themselves infinite pains about moths, butterflies, or
the concha Veneris. Not only did the chevalier have his own particular

shells, but he cherished an ambitious desire which he pursued with a
craft so profound as to be worthy of Sixtus the Fifth: he wanted to

marry a certain rich old maid, with the intention, no doubt, of making
her a stepping-stone by which to reach the more elevated regions of

the court. There, then, lay the secret of his royal bearing and of his
residence in Alencon.

CHAPTER II
SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS

On a Wednesday morning, early, toward the middle of spring, in the
year 16,--such was his mode of reckoning,--at the moment when the

chevalier was putting on his old green-flowered damask dressing-gown,
he heard, despite the cotton in his ears, the light step of a young

girl who was running up the stairway. Presently three taps were
discreetly struck upon the door; then, without waiting for any

response, a handsome girl slipped like an eel into the room occupied