advantages of salon royalty does not easily renounce them. Vanity is
the most tenacious of all habits.

Bonapartist, and afterwards a liberal--for, by the strangest of
metamorphoses, the soldiers of Napoleon became almost to a man
enamoured of the constitutional system--Colonel Giguet was, during
the Restoration, the natural president of the governing committee
of Arcis, which consisted of the notary Grevin, his son-in-law
Beauvisage, and Varlet junior, the chief physician of Arcis,
brother-in-law of Grevin, and a few other liberals.

"If our dear boy is not nominated," said Madame Marion, having first
looked into the antechamber and garden to make sure that no one
overheard her, "he cannot have Mademoiselle Beauvisage; his success in
this election means a marriage with Cecile."

"Cecile!" exclaimed the old man, opening his eyes very wide and
looking at his sister in stupefaction.

"There is no one but you in the whole department who would forget the
_dot_ and the expectations of Mademoiselle Beauvisage," said his
sister.

"She is the richest heiress in the department of the Aube," said Simon
Giguet.

"But it seems to me," said the old soldier, "that my son is not to be
despised as a match; he is your heir, he already has something from
his mother, and I expect to leave him something better than a dry
name."