seat on the bench to his son Joseph, and the whole town knew what he
meant to do. He had made a will in that son's favor; he had gone as

far as the Code will permit a man to go in the way of disinheriting
one child to benefit another; and what was more, he had been putting

by money for the past fifteen years to enable his lout of a son to buy
back from Emile that portion of his father's estate which could not

legally be taken away from him.
Emile Blondet thus turned adrift had contrived to gain distinction in

Paris, but so far it was rather a name than a practical result.
Emile's indolence, recklessness, and happy-go-lucky ways drove his

real father to despair; and when that father died, a half-ruined man,
turned out of office by one of the political reactions so frequent

under the Restoration, it was with a mind uneasy as to the future of a
man endowed with the most brilliant qualities.

Emile Blondet found support in a friendship with a Mlle. de
Troisville, whom he had known before her marriage with the Comte de

Montcornet. His mother was living when the Troisvilles came back after
the emigration; she was related to the family, distantly it is true,

but the connection was close enough to allow her to introduce Emile to
the house. She, poor woman, foresaw the future. She knew that when she

died her son would lose both mother and father, a thought which made
death doubly bitter, so she tried to interest others in him. She

encouraged the liking that sprang up between Emile and the eldest
daughter of the house of Troisville; but while the liking was

exceedingly strong on the young lady's part, a marriage was out of the
question. It was a romance on the pattern of Paul et Virginie. Mme.

Blondet did what she could to teach her son to look to the
Troisvilles, to found a lastingattachment on a children's game of

"make-believe" love, which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances
usually do. When Mlle. de Troisville's marriage with General

Montcornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a dying woman, went to the
bride and solemnly implored her never to abandon Emile, and to use her

influence for him in society in Paris, whither the General's fortune
summoned her to shine.

Luckily for Emile, he was able to make his own way. He made his
appearance, at the age of twenty, as one of the masters of modern

literature; and met with no less success in the society into which he
was launched by the father who at first could afford to bear the

expense of the young man's extravagance. Perhaps Emile's precocious
celebrity and the good figure that he made strengthened the bonds of

his friendship with the Countess. Perhaps Mme. de Montcornet, with the
Russian blood in her veins (her mother was the daughter of the

Princess Scherbelloff), might have cast off the friend of her
childhood if he had been a poor man struggling with all his might

among the difficulties which beset a man of letters in Paris; but by
the time that the real strain of Emile's adventurous life began, their

attachment was unalterable on either side. He was looked upon as one
of the leading lights of journalism when young d'Esgrignon met him at

his first supper party in Paris; his acknowledged position in the
world of letters was very high, and he towered above his reputation.

Goodman Blondet had not the faintest conception of the power which the
Constitutional Government had given to the press; nobody ventured to

talk in his presence of the son of whom he refused to hear. And so it
came to pass that he knew nothing of Emile whom he had cursed and

Emile's greatness.
Old Blondet's integrity was as deeply rooted in him as his passion for

flowers; he knew nothing but law and botany. He would have interviews
with litigants, listen to them, chat with them, and show them his

flowers; he would accept rare seeds from them; but once on the bench,
no judge on earth was more impartial. Indeed, his manner of proceeding

was so well known, that litigants never went near him except to hand
over some document which might enlighten him in the performance of his

duty, and nobody tried to throw dust in his eyes. With his learning,
his lights, and his way of holding his real talents cheap, he was so

indispensable to President du Ronceret, that, matrimonial schemes
apart, that functionary would have done all that he could, in an

underhand way, to prevent the vice-president from retiring in favor of
his son. If the learned old man left the bench, the President would be

utterly unable to do without him.
Goodman Blondet did not know that it was in Emile's power to fulfil

all his wishes in a few hours. The simplicity of his life was worthy
of one of Plutarch's men. In the evening he looked over his cases;

next morning he worked among his flowers; and all day long he gave
decisions on the bench. The pretty maid-servant, now of ripe age, and

wrinkled like an Easter pippin, looked after the house, and they lived
according to the established customs of the strictest parsimony. Mlle.

Cadot always carried the keys of her cupboards and fruit-loft about
with her. She was indefatigable. She went to market herself, she

cooked and dusted and swept, and never missed mass of a morning. To
give some idea of the domestic life of the household, it will be

enough to remark that the father and son never ate fruit till it was
beginning to spoil, because Mlle. Cadot always brought out anything

that would not keep. No one in the house ever tasted the luxury of new
bread, and all the fast days in the calendar were punctually observed.

The gardener was put on rations like a soldier; the elderly Valideh
always kept an eye upon him. And she, for her part, was so

deferentially treated, that she took her meals with the family, and in
consequence was continually trotting to and fro between the kitchen

and the parlor at breakfast and dinner time.
Mlle. Blandureau's parents had consented to her marriage with Joseph

Blondet upon one condition--the penniless and briefless barrister must
be an assistant judge. So, with the desire of fitting his son to fill

the position, old M. Blondet racked his brains to hammer the law into
his son's head by dint of lessons, so as to make a cut-and-dried

lawyer of him. As for Blondet junior, he spent almost every evening at
the Blandureaus' house, to which also young Fabien du Ronceret had

been admitted since his return, without raising the slightest
suspicion in the minds of father or son.

Everything in this life of theirs was measured with an accuracy worthy
of Gerard Dow's Money Changer; not a grain of salt too much, not a

single profit foregone; but the economical principles by which it was
regulated were relaxed in favor of the greenhouse and garden. "The

garden was the master's craze," Mlle. Cadot used to say. The master's
blind fondness for Joseph was not a craze in her eyes; she shared the

father's predilection; she pampered Joseph; she darned his stockings;
and would have been better pleased if the money spent on the garden

had been put by for Joseph's benefit.
That garden was kept in marvelous order by a single man; the paths,

covered with river-sand, continually turned over with the rake,
meandered among the borders full of the rarest flowers. Here were all

kinds of color and scent, here were lizards on the walls, legions of
little flower-pots standing out in the sun, regiments of forks and

hoes, and a host of innocent things, a combination of pleasant results
to justify the gardener's charming hobby.

At the end of the greenhouse the judge had set up a grandstand, an
amphitheatre of benches to hold some five or six thousand pelargoniums

in pots--a splendid and famous show. People came to see his geraniums
in flower, not only from the neighborhood, but even from the

departments round about. The Empress Marie Louise, passing through the
town, had honored the curiously kept greenhouse with a visit; so much

was she impressed with the sight, that she spoke of it to Napoleon,
and the old judge received the Cross of the Legion of Honor. But as

the learnedgardener never mingled in society at all, and went nowhere
except to the Blandureaus, he had no suspicion of the President's

underhand manoeuvres; and others who could see the President's
intentions were far too much afraid of him to interfere or to warn the

inoffensive Blondets.
As for Michu, that young man with his powerful connections gave much

more thought to making himself agreeable to the women in the upper
social circles to which he was introduced by the Cinq-Cygnes, than to

the extremely simple business of a provincial Tribunal. With his
independent means (he had an income of twelve thousand livres), he was

courted by mothers of daughters, and led a frivolous life. He did just
enough at the Tribunal to satisfy his conscience, much as a schoolboy

does his exercises, saying ditto on all occasions, with a "Yes, dear
President." But underneath the appearance of indifference lurked the

unusual powers of the Paris law student who had distinguished himself
as one of the staff of prosecuting counsel before he came to the

provinces. He was accustomed to taking broad views of things; he could