with many expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they walked
rapidly to and fro in the vast and deserted square, majestically
surrounded by its silent and closed palaces, he raised his head towards
the man of bronze on the column, as though taking to witness that great
upstart whose presence in the midst of Paris authorizes all ambitions,
endows every chimera with probability.

There is in young people a warmth of heart, a need of enthusiasm which
is awakened by the least touch. As the Nabob talked, de Gery felt his
suspicion take wing and all his sympathy return, together with a shade
of pity. No, very certainly this man was not a rascal, but a poor,
illuded being whose fortune had gone to his head like a wine too heavy
for a stomach long accustomed to water. Alone in the midst of Paris,
surrounded by enemies and people ready to take advantage of him,
Jansoulet made upon him the impression of a man on foot laden with gold
passing through some evil-haunted wood, in the dark and unarmed. And
he reflected that it would be well for the _protege_ to watch,
without seeming to do so, over the protector, to become the discerning
Telemachus of the blind Mentor, to point out to him the quagmires, to
defend him against the highwaymen, to aid him, in a word, in his combats
amid all that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt were prowling
ferociously around the Nabob and his millions.




THE JOYEUSE FAMILY

Every morning of the year, at exactly eight o'clock, a new and almost
tenantless house in a remote quarter of Paris, echoed to cries, calls,