became by the death of his brothers the family heir, the young man met
with a serious disappointment. Madame Marion had counted much, for her
nephew, on the inheritance of his grandfather the banker of Hamburg.
But when that old German died in 1826, he left his grandson Giguet a
paltry two thousand francs a year. The worthy banker, endowed with
great procreative powers, having soothed the worries of business by
the pleasures of paternity, favored the families of eleven other
children who surrounded him, and who made him believe, with some
appearance of justice, that Simon Giguet was already a rich man.

Besides all this, the colonel was bent on giving his son an
independent position, and for this reason: the Giguets could not
expect any government favors under the Restoration. Even if Simon had
not been the son of an ardent Bonapartist, he belonged to a family
whose members had justly incurred the animosity of the Cinq-Cygne
family, owing to the part which Giguet, the colonel of gendarmerie,
and the Marions, including Madame Marion, had taken as witnesses on
the famous trial of the Messieurs de Simeuse, unjustly condemned in
1805 for the abduction of the Comte de Gondreville, then senator, and
formerly representative of the people, who had despoiled the
Cinq-Cygne family of their property. [See "An Historical Mystery."]

Grevin was not only one of the most important witnesses at that trial,
but he was one of the chief promoters of the prosecution. That affair
divides to this day the arrondissement of Arcis into two parties; one
of which declares the innocence of the condemned; the other standing
by the Comte de Gondreville and his adherents. Though, under the
Restoration, the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne used all the influence the
return of the Bourbons gave her to arrange things as she wished in the
department of the Aube, the Comte de Gondreville contrived to