will go to his niece, Mlle. Duval. M. Duval is an ironmaster, his

purse is tolerably filled, to begin with, and his father is still
alive, and has a little property besides. The father and son have a

million of francs between them; they will double it with du Croisier's
help, for du Croisier has business connections among great capitalists

and manufacturers in Paris. M. and Mme. Duval the younger would be
certain to give their daughter to a suitor brought forward by du

Croisier, for he is sure to leave two fortunes to his niece; and, in
all probability, he will settle the reversion of his wife's property

upon Mlle. Duval in the marriage contract, for Mme. du Croisier has no
kin. You know how du Croisier hates the d'Esgrignons. Do him a

service, be his man, take up this charge of forgery which he is going
to make against young d'Esgrignon, and follow up the proceedings at

once without consulting the public prosecutor at Paris. And, then,
pray Heaven that the Ministry dismisses you for doing your office

impartially, in spite of the powers that be; for if they do, your
fortune is made! You will have a charming wife and thirty thousand

francs a year with her, to say nothing of four millions expectations
in ten years' time."

In two evenings Sauvager was talked over. Both he and the President
kept the affair a secret from old Blondet, from Michu, and from the

second member of the staff of prosecuting counsel. Feeling sure of
Blondet's impartiality on a question of fact, the President made

certain of a majority without counting Camusot. And now Camusot's
unexpected defection had thrown everything out. What the President

wanted was a committal for trial before the public prosecutor got
warning. How if Camusot or the second counsel for the prosecution

should send word to Paris?
And here some portion of Camusot's private history may perhaps explain

how it came to pass that Chesnel took it for granted that the
examining magistrate would be on the d'Esgrignons' side, and how he

had the boldness to tamper in the open street with that representative
of justice.

Camusot's father, a well-known silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais,
was ambitious for the only son of his first marriage, and brought him

up to the law. When Camusot junior took a wife, he gained with her the
influence of an usher of the Royal cabinet, backstairs influence, it

is true, but still sufficient, since it had brought him his first
appointment as justice of the peace, and the second as examining

magistrate. At the time of his marriage, his father only settled an
income of six thousand francs upon him (the amount of his mother's

fortune, which he could legally claim), and as Mlle. Thirion brought
him no more than twenty thousand francs as her portion, the young

couple knew the hardships of hiddenpoverty. The salary of a
provincial justice of the peace does not exceed fifteen hundred

francs, while an examining magistrate's stipend is augmented by
something like a thousand francs, because his position entails

expenses and extra work. The post, therefore, is much coveted, though
it is not permanent, and the work is heavy, and that was why Mme.

Camusot had just scolded her husband for allowing the President to
read his thoughts.

Marie Cecile Amelie Thirion, after three years of marriage, perceived
the blessing of Heaven upon it in the regularity of two auspicious

events--the births of a girl and a boy; but she prayed to be less
blessed in the future. A few more of such blessings would turn

straitened means into distress. M. Camusot's father's money was not
likely to come to them for a long time; and, rich as he was, he would

scarcely leave more than eight or ten thousand francs a year to each
of his children, four in number, for he had been married twice. And

besides, by the time that all "expectations," as matchmakers call
them, were realized, would not the magistrate have children of his own

to settle in life? Any one can imagine the situation for a little
woman with plenty of sense and determination, and Mme. Camusot was

such a woman. She did not refrain from meddling in matters judicial.
She had far too strong a sense of the gravity of a false step in her

husband's career.
She was the only child of an old servant of Louis XVIII., a valet who

had followed his master in his wanderings in Italy, Courland, and
England, till after the Restoration the King awarded him with the one

place that he could fill at Court, and made him usher by rotation to
the royal cabinet. So in Amelie's home there had been, as it were, a

sort of reflection of the Court. Thirion used to tell her about the
lords, and ministers, and great men whom he announced and introduced

and saw passing to and fro. The girl, brought up at the gates of the
Tuileries, had caught some tincture of the maxims practised there, and

adopted the dogma of passiveobedience to authority. She had sagely
judged that her husband, by ranging himself on the side of the

d'Esgrignons, would find favor with Mme. la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
and with two powerful families on whose influence with the King the

Sieur Thirion could depend at an opportune moment. Camusot might get
an appointment at the first opportunity within the jurisdiction of

Paris, and afterwards at Paris itself. That promotion, dreamed of and
longed for at every moment, was certain to have a salary of six

thousand francs attached to it, as well as the alleviation of living
in her own father's house, or under the Camusots' roof, and all the

advantages of a father's fortune on either side. If the adage, "Out of
sight is out of mind," holds good of most women, it is particularly

true where family feeling or royal or ministerial patronage is
concerned. The personal attendants of kings prosper at all times; you

take an interest in a man, be it only a man in livery, if you see him
every day.

Mme. Camusot, regarding herself as a bird of passage, had taken a
little house in the Rue du Cygne. Furnished lodgings there were none;

the town was not enough of a thoroughfare, and the Camusots could not
afford to live at an inn like M. Michu. So the fair Parisian had no

choice for it but to take such furniture as she could find; and as she
paid a very moderate rent, the house was remarkably ugly, albeit a

certain quaintness of detail was not wanting. It was built against a
neighboring house in such a fashion that the side with only one window

in each story, gave upon the street, and the front looked out upon a
yard where rose-bushes and buckhorn were growing along the wall on

either side. On the farther side, opposite the house, stood a shed, a
roof over two brick arches. A little wicket-gate gave entrance into

the gloomy place (made gloomier still by the great walnut-tree which
grew in the yard), but a double flight of steps, with an elaborately-

wrought but rust-eaten handrail, led to the house door. Inside the
house there were two rooms on each floor. The dining-room occupied

that part of the ground floor nearest the street, and the kitchen lay
on the other side of a narrow passage almost wholly taken up by the

wooden staircase. Of the two first-floor rooms, one did duty as the
magistrate's study, the other as a bedroom, while the nursery and the

servants' bedroom stood above in the attics. There were no ceilings in
the house; the cross-beams were simply white-washed and the spaces

plastered over. Both rooms on the first floor and the dining-room
below were wainscoted and adorned with the labyrinthine designs which

taxed the patience of the eighteenth century joiner; but the carving
had been painted a dingy gray most depressing to behold.

The magistrate's study looked as though it belonged to a provincial
lawyer; it contained a big bureau, a mahoganyarmchair, a law

student's books, and shabbybelongings transported from Paris. Mme.
Camusot's room was more of a native product; it boasted a blue-and-

white scheme of decoration, a carpet, and that anomalous kind of
furniture which appears to be in the fashion, while it is simply some

style that has failed in Paris. As to the dining-room, it was nothing
but an ordinary provincial dining-room, bare and chilly, with a damp,

faded paper on the walls.
In this shabby room, with nothing to see but the walnut-tree, the dark

leaves growing against the walls, and the almost deserted road beyond
them, a somewhat lively and frivolous woman, accustomed to the

amusements and stir of Paris, used to sit all day long, day after day,
and for the most part of the time alone, though she received tiresome