The young Count indulged in other escapades in the town. These the
Chevalier regarded as "amourettes," but they cost Chesnel something
considerable in portions for forsaken damsels seduced under imprudent
promises of marriage: yet other cases there were which came under an
article of the Code as to the abduction of minors; and but for
Chesnel's timely intervention, the new law would have been allowed to
take its brutal course, and it is hard to say where the Count might
have ended. Victurnien grew the bolder for these victories over
bourgeois justice. He was so accustomed to be pulled out of scrapes,
that he never thought twice before any prank. Courts of law, in his
opinion, were bugbears to frighten people who had no hold on him.
Things which he would have blamed in common people were for him only
pardonable amusements. His disposition to treat the new laws
cavalierly while obeying the maxims of a Code for aristocrats, his
behavior and character, were all pondered, analyzed, and tested by a
few adroit persons in du Croisier's interests. These folk supported
each other in the effort to make the people believe that Liberal
slanders were revelations, and that the Ministerial policy at bottom
meant a return to the old order of things.

What a bit of luck to find something by way of proof of their
assertions! President du Ronceret, and the public prosecutor likewise,
lent themselves admirably, so far as was compatible with their duty as
magistrates, to the design of letting off the offender as easily as
possible; indeed, they went deliberately out of their way to do this,
well pleased to raise a Liberal clamor against their overlarge
concessions. And so, while seeming to serve the interests of the
d'Esgrignons, they stirred up feeling against them. The treacherous de
Ronceret had it in his mind to pose as incorruptible at the right