twenty miles an hour, and started for Troyes with a letter in order
that it may reach Paris to-morrow! And only nine years and a half old!
What will he be at twenty?"

The sub-prefect listened mechanically to these remarks. Julien
gossiped on, his master listening, absorbed in thought about the
stranger.

"Wait here," he said to the man as he turned with slow steps to
re-enter the salon. "What a mess!" he thought to himself,--"a man who
dines at Gondreville and spends the night at Cinq-Cygnes! Mysteries
indeed!"

"Well?" cried the circle around Mademoiselle Beauvisage as soon as he
reappeared.

"He is a count, and _vieille roche_, I answer for it."

"Oh! how I should like to see him!" cried Cecile.

"Mademoiselle," said Antonin, smiling and looking maliciously at
Madame Mollot, "he is tall and well-made and does not wear a wig. His
little groom was as drunk as the twenty-four cantons; they filled him
with champagne at Gondreville and that little scamp, only nine years
old, answered my man Julien, who asked him about his master's wig,
with all the assumption of an old valet: 'My master! wear a wig!--if
he did I'd leave him. He dyes his hair and that's bad enough.'"

"Your opera-glass magnifies," said Achille Pigoult to Madame Mollot,
who laughed.