you find any other Madame or Mademoiselle Duval; and of course you remember your promise not to mention to any one the commission of inquiry you so kindly undertake. I congratulate you on your friendship for M. de Rochebriant. What a noble countenance and manner!" lishman, who did not want tact nor deli-I know the difference; honour is engaged cacy, thought that he had made himself to the first. Be sure you let me know if de trop in the tête-à-tête of two friends of the same age and nation; and, catching up his paletot, said hastily, "No, Marquis, do not go yet, and leave our host in solitude; for I have an engagement which presses, and only looked in at Lemercier's for a moment, seeing the light at his windows. Permit me to hope that our acquaintance will not drop, and inform me where I may have the honour to call on you." "Nay," said the Marquis; "I claim the right of a native to pay my respects first to the foreigner who visits our capital, and," he added in a lower tone, "who speaks so nobly of those who revere its exiles." The Englishman saluted, and walked slowly towards the door; but on reaching the threshold turned back and made a sign to Lemercier, unperceived by Alain. Frederic understood the sign, and followed Graham Vane into the adjoining room, closing the door as he passed. 66 'My dear Lemercier, of course I should not have intruded on you at this hour on a mere visit of ceremony. I called to say that the Mademoiselle Duval whose address you sent me is not the right one not the lady whom, knowing your wide range of acquaintance, I asked you to aid me in finding out." "Not the right Duval? Diable! she answered your description exactly." "Not at all." 66 Lemercier returned to the Marquis. "Such a pity you can't dine with us tomorrow. I fear you made but a poor dinner to-day. But it is always better to arrange the menu beforehand. I will send to Philippe's to-morrow. Do not be afraid.” The Marquis paused a moment, and on his young face a proud struggle was visible. At last he said, bluntly and manfully "My dear Frederic, your world and mine are not and cannot be the same. Why should I be ashamed to own to my old schoolfellow that I am poor - very poor; that the dinner I have shared with you to-day is to me a criminal extravagance? I lodge in a single chamber on the fourth story; I dine off a single plat at a small restaurateur's; the utmost income I can allow to myself does not exceed 5000 francs a-year: my fortunes I cannot hope much to improve. In his own country Alain de Rochebriant has no ca reer." "You said she was very pretty and young under twenty." "You forgot that I said she deserved that description twenty-one years ago." 'Ah, so you did; but some ladies are always young. Age,' says a wit in the Figaro, is a river which the women compel to reascend to its source when it has flowed onward more than twenty years.' Never mind-soyez tranquille —I will find your Duval yet if she is to be found. But in two years. why could not the friend who commis- capitals: I my sioned you to inquire choose a name less grand name. common? Duval! every street in Paris has a shop-door over which is inscribed the name of Duval." Lemercier was so astonished by this confession that he remained for some moments silent, eyes and mouth both wide open; at length he sprang up, embraced his friend welluigh sobbing, and exclaimed, “Tant mieux pour moi! You must take your lodging with me. I have a charming bedroom to spare. Don't say no. It will raise my own position to say I and Rochebriant keep house together. It must be so. Come here to-morrow. As for not having a career bah! I and Duplessis will settle that. You shall be a millionaire Meanwhile we will join paltry notes, you your Settled! "My dear, dear Frederic," said the young noble, deeply affected, “ on reflection you will see what you propose is im"Quite true, there is the difficulty; possible. Poor I may be without dishonhowever, my dear Lemercier, pray con- our; live at another man's cost I cannot tinue to look out for a Louise Duval who do without baseness. It does not require was young and pretty twenty-one years to be gentilhomme to feel that: it is enough ago this search ought to interest me to be a Frenchman. Come and see me more than that which I intrusted to you when you can spare the time. There is to-night, respecting the pearly-robed lady: my address. You are the only man in for in the last I but gratify my own whim; Paris to whom I shall be at home. Au rein the first I discharge a promise to a voir." And breaking away from Lemerfriend. You, so perfect a Frenchman,' cier's clasp, the Marquis hurried off. CHAPTER III. ALAIN reached the house in which he lodged. Externally a fine house, it had been the hotel of a great family in the old régime. On the first floor were still superb apartments, with ceilings painted by Le Brun, with walls on which the thick silks still seemed fresh. These rooms were occupied by a rich agent de change; but, like all such ancient palaces, the upper stories were wretchedly defective even in the comforts which poor men demand nowadays: a back staircase, narrow, dirty, never lighted, dark as Erebus, led to the room occupied by the Marquis, which might be naturally occupied by a needy student or a virtuous grisette. But there was to him a charm in that old hotel, and the richest locataire therein was not treated with a respect so ceremonious as that which attended the lodger on the fourth story. The porter and his wife were Bretons; they came from the village of Rochebriant; they had known Alain's parents in their young days; it was their kinsman who had recommended him to the hotel which they served: so, when he paused at the lodge for his key, which he had left there, the porter's wife was in waiting for his return, and insisted on lighting him up-stairs and seeing to his fire, for after a warm day the night had turned to that sharp biting cold which is more trying in Paris than even in London. The old woman, running up the stairs before him, opened the door of his room, and busied herself at the fire. "Gently, my good Martha," said he, “ that log suffices. I have been extravagant to-day, and must pinch for it." "M. le Marquis jests," said the old woman, laughing. 66 No, Martha; I am serious. I have sinned, but I shall reform. Entre nous, my dear friend, Paris is very dear when one sets one's foot out of doors: I must soon go back to Rochebriant." "When M. le Marquis goes back to Rochebriant he must take with him a Madame la Marquise· some pretty angel with a suitable dot." "A dot suitable to the ruins of Rochebriant would not suffice to repair them, Martha give me my dressing-gown, and good-night." "Bon repos, M. le Marquis! beaux rêves, et bel avenir." "Bel avenir!" murmured the young man bitterly, leaning his cheek on his hand; "what fortune fairer than the present can be mine? yet inaction in youth is more keenly felt than in age. How lightly I should endure poverty if it brought poverty's ennobling companion, Labour -denied to me! Well, well I must go back to the old rock: on this ocean there is no sail, not even an oar, for me." Alain de Rochebriant had not been reared to the expectation of poverty. The only son of a father whose estates were large beyond those of most nobles in modern France, his destined heritage seemed not unsuitable to his illustrious birth. Educated at a provincial academy, he had been removed at the age of sixteen to Rochebriant, and lived there simply and lonelily enough, but still in a sort of feudal state, with an aunt, an elder and unmarried sister to his father. His father he never saw but twice after leaving college. That brilliant seigneur visited France but rarely, for very brief intervals, residing wholly abroad. To him went all the revenues of Rochebriant save what sufficed for the ménage of his son and his sister. It was the cherished belief of these two loyal natures that the Marquis devoted his fortune to the cause of the Bourbons-how, they knew not, though they often amused themselves by conjecturing; and the young man, as he grew up, nursed the hope that he should soon hear that the descendant of Henri Quatre had crossed the frontier on a white charger and hoisted the old gonfalon with its fleurde-lis. Then, indeed, his own career would be opened, and the sword of the Kerouecs drawn from its sheath. Day after day he expected to hear of revolts, of which his noble father was doubtless the soul. But the Marquis, though a sincere Legitimist, was by no means an enthusiastic fanatic. He was simply a very proud, a very polished, a very luxurious, and, though not without the kindliness and generosity which were common attributes of the old French noblesse, a very selfish grand seigneur. Losing his wife (who died the first year of marriage in giving birth to Alain) while he was yet very young, he had lived a frank libertine life until he fell submissive under the despotic yoke of a Russian Princess, who, for some mysterious reason, never visited her own country and obsti-nately refused to reside in France. She was fond of travel, and moved yearly from London to Naples, Naples to Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Seville, Carlsbad, Baden-Baden - anywhere for caprice or change, except Paris. This fair wanderer succeeded in chaining to herself the heart and the steps of the Marquis de Rochebriant. She was very rich; she lived semi-royally. Hers was just the house in which it suited the Marquis to be the enfant gâté. I suspect that, cat-like, his attachment was rather to the house than to the person of his mistress. Not that he was domiciled with the Princess; that would have been somewhat too much against the proprieties, greatly too much against the Marquis's notions of his own dignity. He had his own carriage, his own apartments, his own suite, as became so grand a seigneur, and the lover of so grand a dame. His estates, mortgaged before he came to them, yielded no income sufficient for his wants; he mortgaged deeper and deeper, year after year, till he could mortgage them no more. He sold his hotel at Paris - he accepted without scruple his sister's fortune he borrowed with equal sang froid the two hundred thousand francs which his son on coming of age inherited from his mother. Alain yielded that fortune to him without a murmur nay, with pride; he thought it destined to go towards raising a regiment for the fleur-de-lis. To do the Marquis justice, he was fully persuaded that he should shortly restore to his sister and son what he so recklessly took from them. He was engaged to be married to his Princess so soon as her own husband died. She had been separated from the Prince for many years, and every year it was said he could not last a year longer. But he completed the measure of his conjugal iniquities by continuing to live; and one day, by mistake, Death robbed the lady of the Marquis instead of the Prince. 66 This was an accident which the Marquis had never counted upon. He was still young enough to consider himself young; in fact, one principal reason for keeping Alain secluded in Brittany was his reluctance to introduce into the world a son as old as myself," he would say pathetically. The news of his death which happened at Baden after a short attack of bronchitis caught in a supper al fresco at the old castle, was duly transmitted to Rochebriant by the Princess; and the shock to Alain and his aunt was the greater because they had seen so little of the departed that they regarded him as a heroic myth, an impersonification of ancient chivalry, condemning himself to voluntary exile rather than do homage to usurpers. But from their grief they were roused by the terrible doubt whether Rochebriant could still be retained in the family. Besides the mortgagees, creditors from half the capitals in Europe sent in their claims; and all the movable effects transmitted to Alain by his father's confidential Italian valet, except sundry carriages and horses which were sold at Baden for what they would fetch, were a magnificent dressing-case, in the secret drawer of which were some bank-notes amounting to thirty thousand francs, and three large boxes containing the Marquis's correspondence, a few miniature female portraits, and a great many locks of hair. Wholly unprepared for the ruin that stared him in the face, the young Marquis evinced the natural strength of his character by the calmness with which he met the danger, and the intelligence with which he calculated and reduced it. By the help of the family notary in the neighbouring town, he made himself master of his liabilities and his means; and he found that, after paying all debts and providing for the interest of the mortgages, a property which ought to have realized a rental of £10,000 a-year, yielded not more than £400. Nor was even this margin safe, nor the property out of peril; for the principal mortgagee, who was a capitalist in Paris named Louvier, having had during the life of the late Marquis more than once to wait for his half-yearly interest longer than suited his patience and his patience was not enduring - plainly declared that if the same delay recurred he should put his right of seizure in force; and in France still more than England, bad seasons seriously affect the security of rents. To pay away £9600 a-year regularly out of £10,000, with the penalty of forfeiting the whole if not paid, whether crops may fail, farmers procrastinate, and timber fall in price, is to live with the sword of Damocles over one's head. For two years and more, however, Alain met his difficulties with prudence and vigour; he retrenched the establishment hitherto kept at the château, resigned such rural pleasures as he had been accustomed to indulge, and lived like one of his petty farmers. But the risks of the future remained undiminished. "There is, but one way, Monsieur le Marquis," said the family notary, M. Hébert, "by which you can put your estate in comparative safety. Your father raised his mortgages from time to time, as he wanted money, and often at interest above the average market interest. You may add considerably to your income by consolidating all these mortgages into one at a lower percentage, and in so doing pay off this formidable mortgagee, M. Louvier, who, I shrewdly suspect, is bent upon be fied the man for the age he lived in, and, if not greatly modified, would cut him off from the hopes and aspirations of his eager generation. He thought plausibly enough that the air of the grand metropolis was necessary to the mental health, enfeebled and withering amidst the feudal mists of Bretagne; that once in Paris, Alain would imbibe the ideas of Paris, adapt himself to some career leading to honour and to fortune, for which he took facilities from his high birth, an historical name too national for any dynasty not to welcome among its adherents, and an intellect not yet sharpened by contact and competition with others, but in itself vigorous, habituated to thought, and vivified by the noble aspirations which belong to imaginative natures. Coming the proprietor of Rochebriant. I was too practical a man of business to Unfortunately those few portions of your share, those chivalrous sentiments of loyland which were but lightly charged, and, alty to an exiled dynasty which disqualilying contiguous to small proprietors, were coveted by them, and could be advantageously sold, are already gone to pay the debts of Monsieur the late Marquis. There are, however, two small farms which, bordering close on the town of S―, I think I could dispose of for building purposes at high rates; but these lands are covered by Monsieur Louvier's general mortgage, and he has refused to release them, unless the whole debt be paid. Were that debt therefore transferred to another mortgagee, we might stipulate for their exception, and in so doing secure a sum of more than 100,000 francs, which you could keep in reserve for a pressing or unforeseen occasion, and make the nucleus of a capital devoted to the gradual liquidation of the charges on the estate. For with a little capital, Monsieur le Marquis, your rent- At the least, Alain would be at Paris in roll might be very greatly increased, the the social position which would afford him forests and orchards improved, those the opportunities of a marriage, in which meadows round S drained and irri- his birth and rank would be readily acgated. Agriculture is beginning to be cepted as an equivalent to some ample understood in Bretagne, and your estate fortune that would serve to redeem the would soon double its value in the hands endangered seigneuries. He therefore of a spirited capitalist. My advice to you, warned Alain that the affair for which he therefore, is to go to Paris, employ a good went to Paris might be tedious, that lawaroue, practised in such branch of his pro- yers were always slow, and advised him fession, to negotiate the consolidation of to calculate on remaining several months, your mortgages upon terms that will en- perhaps a year; delicately suggesting that able you to sell outlying portions, and so his rearing hitherto had been too secluded pay off the charge by instalments agreed for his age and rank, and that a year at upon; to see if some safe Company or Paris, even if he failed in the object which rich individual can be found to undertake took him there, would not be thrown away for a term of years the management of in the knowledge of men and things that your forests, the draining of the Swould fit him better to grapple with his meadows, the superintendence of your fish- difficulties on his return. eries, &c. They, it is true, will monopo-. Alain divided his spare income between lize the profits for many years - perhaps twenty; but you are a young man; at the end of that time you will re-enter on your estate with a rental so improved that the mortgages, now so awful, will seem to you comparatively trivial." his aunt and himself, and had come to Paris resolutely determined to live within the £200 a-year which remained to his share. He felt the revolution in his whole being which commenced when out of sight of the petty principality in which he was In pursuance of this advice, the young the object of that feudal reverence, still Marquis had come to Paris fortified with a surviving in the more unfrequented parts letter from M. Hébert to an avoué of emi- of Bretagne, for the representatives of nence, and with many letters from his illustrious names connected with the imaunt to the nobles of the Faubourg con- memorial legends of the province. nected with his house. Now one reason The very bustle of a railway, with its why M. Hébert had urged his client to un-crowd and quickness and unceremonious dertake this important business in person, democracy of travel, served to pain and rather than volunteer his own services in confound and humiliate that sense of indiParis, was somewhat extra-professional. He had a sincere and profound affection for Alain; he felt compassion for that young life so barrenly wasted in seclusion and severe privations; he respected, but vidual dignity in which he had been nurtured. He felt that, once away from Rochebriant, he was but a cipher in the sum of human beings. Arrived at Paris, and reaching the gloomy hotel to which he "Nevertheless," said Alain, quietly, "I should imagine that there must be many capitalists in Paris willing to invest in good securities at fair interest." "You are mistaken, Marquis; very few such capitalists. Men worth money nowadays like quick returns and large profits, thanks to the magnificent system of Credit Mobilier, in which, as you are aware, a man may place his money in any trade or speculation without liabilities beyond his share. Capitalists are nearly all traders or speculators." had been recommended, he greeted even the desolation of that solitude which is usually so oppressive to a stranger in the metropolis of his native land. Loneliness was better than the loss of self in the reek and pressure of an unfamiliar throng. For the first few days he had wandered over Paris without calling even on the avoué to whom M. Hébert had directed him. He felt with the instinctive acuteness of a mind which, under sounder training, would have achieved no mean distinction, that it was a safe precaution to imbue himself with the atmosphere of the place, seize Then," said the Marquis, half rising, on those general ideas which in great cap-"I am to presume, sir, that you are not itals are so contagious that they are often likely to assist me." more accurately caught by the first impressions than by subsequent habit, before he brought his mind into contact with those of the individuals he had practically to deal with. At last he repaired to the avoué, M. Gandrin, Rue St. Florentin. He had mechanically formed his idea of the abode and person of an avoué from his association with M. Hébert. He expected to find a dull house in a dull street near the centre of business, remote from the haunts of idlers, and a grave man of unpretending exterior and matured years. 66 No, I don't say that, Marquis. I will look with care into the matter. Doubtless you have with you an abstract of the necessary documents, the conditions of the present mortgages, the rental of the estate, its probable prospects, and so forth." "Sir, I have such an abstract with me at Paris; and having gone into it myself with M. Hébert, I can pledge you my word that it is strictly faithful to the facts." The Marquis said this with naïve simplicity, as if his word were quite sufficient to set that part of the question at rest. M. Gandrin smiled politely and said, He arrived at a hotel newly fronted, richly "Eh bien, M. le Marquis: favour me with decorated, in the fashionable quartier close the abstract; in a week's time you shall by the Tuileries. He entered a wide porte have my opinion. You enjoy Paris? cochère, and was directed by the concierge Greatly improved under the Emperor; to mount au premier. There, first detained the salons, indeed, are hardly open yet. A in an office faultlessly neat, with spruce propos, Madame Gandrin receives to-moryoung men at smart desks, he was at row evening; allow me that opportunity length admitted into a noble salon, and to present you to her." into the presence of a gentleman lounging Unprepared for the proffered hospitalin an easy-chair before a magnificent bu-ity, the Marquis had no option but to murreau of marqueterie, genre Louis Seize, engaged in patting a white curly lapdog, with a pointed nose and a shrill bark. The gentleman rose politely on his entrance, and released the dog, who after sniffing the Marquis, condescended not to bite. mur his gratification and assent. In a minute more he was in the streets. The next evening he went to Madame Gandrin's - a brilliant reception-a whole moving flower-bed of "decorations "there. Having gone through the ceremony of presentation to Madame Gandrin-a hand"Monsieur le Marquis," said M. Gandrin, some woman dressed to perfection, and glancing at the card and the introductory conversing with the secretary to an emnote from M. Hébert, which Alain had bassy-the young noble ensconced himself sent in, and which lay on the secrétaire be- in an obscure and quiet corner, observing side heaps of letters nicely arranged and all, and imagining that he escaped observalabelled, "charmed to make the honour of tion. And as the young men of his own your acquaintance; just arrived at Paris? years glided by him, or as their talk So M. Hébert - -a very worthy person reached his ears, he became aware that whom I have never seen, but with whom I from top to toe, within and without, he have had correspondence - - tells me you was old-fashioned, obsolete, not of his race, wish for my advice; in fact, he wrote to not of his day. His rank itself seemed to me some days ago, mentioning the busi- him a waste-paper title deed to a heritage ness in question consolidation of mort-long lapsed. Not thus the princely seiggages. A very large sum wanted, Mon-neurs of Rochebriant made their début at the sieur le Marquis, and not to be had easily." capital of their nation. They had had the |