in short, the voice a woman would willingly listen to after feeling
the flame of their looks. But, above all, they had the modesty of
pride, a chaste reserve, a /touch-me-not/ which at a maturer age might
have seemed intentional coyness, so much did their demeanor inspire a
wish to know them. The elder, Comte Clement de Negrepelisse, was close
upon his sixteenth year. For the last two years he had ceased to wear
the pretty English round jacket which his brother, Vicomte Camille
d'Espard, still wore. The Count, who for the last six months went no
more to the College Henri IV., was dressed in the style of a young man
enjoying the first pleasures of fashion. His father had not wished to
condemn him to a year's useless study of philosophy; he was trying to
give his knowledge some consistency by the study of transcendental
mathematics. At the same time, the Marquis was having him taught
Eastern languages, the international law of Europe, heraldry, and
history from the original sources, charters, early documents, and
collections of edicts. Camille had lately begun to study rhetoric.

The day when Popinot arranged to go to question M. d'Espard was a
Thursday, a holiday. At about nine in the morning, before their father
was awake, the brothers were playing in the garden. Clement was
finding it hard to refuse his brother, who was anxious to go to the
shooting-gallery for the first time, and who begged him to second his
request to the Marquis. The Viscount always rather took advantage of
his weakness, and was very fond of wrestling with his brother. So the
couple were quarreling and fighting in play like schoolboys. As they
ran in the garden, chasing each other, they made so much noise as to
wake their father, who came to the window without their perceiving him
in the heat of the fray. The Marquis amused himself with watching his
two children twisted together like snakes, their faces flushed by the
exertion of their strength; their complexion was rose and white, their