d'Esgrignon. "A d'Esgrignon ought not to permit himself to do such and
such a thing; he bears a name which pledges him to make a future
worthy of the past"--a noble teaching which should have been
sufficient in itself to keep alive the tradition of noblesse--had
been, as it were, the burden of Victurnien's cradle song. He heard
them from the old Marquis, from Mlle. Armande, from Chesnel, from the
intimates of the house. And so it came to pass that good and evil met,
and in equal forces, in the boy's soul.

At the age of eighteen, Victurnien went into society. He noticed some
slight discrepancies between the outer world of the town and the inner
world of the Hotel d'Esgrignon, but he in no wise tried to seek the
causes of them. And, indeed, the causes were to be found in Paris. He
had yet to learn that the men who spoke their minds out so boldly in
evening talk with his father, were extremely careful of what they said
in the presence of the hostile persons with whom their interests
compelled them to mingle. His own father had won the right of freedom
of speech. Nobody dreamed of contradicting an old man of seventy, and
besides, every one was willing to overlook fidelity to the old order
of things in a man who had been violently despoiled.

Victurnien was deceived by appearances, and his behavior set up the
backs of the townspeople. In his impetuous way he tried to carry
matters with too high a hand over some difficulties in the way of
sport, which ended in formidable lawsuits, hushed up by Chesnel for
money paid down. Nobody dared to tell the Marquis of these things. You
may judge of his astonishment if he had heard that his son had been
prosecuted for shooting over his lands, his domains, his covers, under
the reign of a son of St. Louis! People were too much afraid of the
possible consequences to tell him about such trifles, Chesnel said.