transition costume, uniting as it did two centuries, was worn by the
chevalier with the high-bred grace of an old French marquis, the
secret of which is lost to France since the day when Fleury, Mole's
last pupil, vanished.

The private life of this old bachelor was apparently open to all eyes,
though in fact it was quite mysterious. He lived in a lodging that was
modest, to say the best of it, in the rue du Cours, on the second
floor of a house belonging to Madame Lardot, the best and busiest
washerwoman in the town. This circumstance will explain the excessive
nicety of his linen. Ill-luck would have it that the day came when
Alencon was guilty of believing that the chevalier had not always
comported himself as a gentleman should, and that in fact he was
secretly married in his old age to a certain Cesarine,--the mother of
a child which had had the impertinence to come into the world without
being called for.

"He had given his hand," as a certain Monsieur du Bousquier remarked,
"to the person who had long had him under irons."

This horrible calumny embittered the last days of the dainty chevalier
all the more because, as the present Scene will show, he had lost a
hope long cherished to which he had made many sacrifices.

Madame Lardot leased to the chevalier two rooms on the second floor of
her house, for the modest sum of one hundred francs a year. The worthy
gentleman dined out every day, returning only in time to go to bed.
His sole expense therefore was for breakfast, invariably composed of a
cup of chocolate, with bread and butter and fruits in their season. He
made no fire except in the coldest winter, and then only enough to get