being _socked_ as its throat of being moistened.

Phileas displayed under these unfortunate circumstances an activity
nearly equal to that of the Emperor. This general of hosiery made a
commercial campaign of 1814 with splendid but ignored courage. A
league or two behind where the army advanced he bought up caps and
socks as the Emperor gathered immortal palms by his very reverses. The
genius was equal on both sides, though exercised in different spheres;
one aimed at covering heads, the other at mowing them down. Obliged to
create some means of transportation in order to save his tons of
hosiery, which he stored in a suburb of Paris, Phileas often put in
requisition horses and army-waggons, as if the safety of the empire
were concerned. But the majesty of commerce was surely as precious as
that of Napoleon. The English merchants, in buying out the European
markets, certainly got the better of the colossus who threatened their
trade.

By the time the Emperor abdicated at Fontainebleau, Phileas,
triumphant, was master of the situation. He maintained, by clever
manoeuvring, the depreciation in cottons, and doubled his fortune at
the moment when his luckiest competitors were getting rid of their
merchandise at a loss of fifty per cent. He returned to Arcis with a
fortune of three hundred thousand francs, half of which, invested on
the Grand-Livre at sixty, returned him an income of fifteen thousand
francs a year. He employed the remainder in building, furnishing, and
adorning a handsome house on the Place du Pont in Arcis.

On the return of the successful hosier, Monsieur Grevin was naturally
his confidant. The notary had an only daughter to marry, then twenty
years of age. Grevin, a widower, knew the fortune of Madame