"No, M. le Chevalier."

"Oh, well; he flung the purse out of the window to a sweeper in the
courtyard, and said to his grandson, 'Then they do not teach you to be
a prince here?'"

Chesnel bent his head and made no answer. But that night, as he lay
awake, he thought that such doctrines as these were fatal in times
when there was one law for everybody, and foresaw the first beginnings
of the ruin of the d'Esgrignons.



But for these explanations which depict one side of provincial life in
the time of the Empire and the Restoration, it would not be easy to
understand the opening scene of this history, an incident which took
place in the great salon one evening towards the end of October 1822.
The card-tables were forsaken, the Collection of Antiquities--elderly
nobles, elderly countesses, young marquises, and simple baronesses
--had settled their losses and winnings. The master of the house was
pacing up and down the room, while Mlle. Armande was putting out the
candles on the card-tables. He was not taking exercise alone, the
Chevalier was with him, and the two wrecks of the eighteenth century
were talking of Victurnien. The Chevalier had undertaken to broach the
subject with the Marquis.

"Yes, Marquis," he was saying, "your son is wasting his time and his
youth; you ought to send him to court."

"I have always thought," said the Marquis, "that if my great age