in a livelier tone, "But what a marvellous city this Paris of ours is!
Remember I had never seen it before: it burst on me like a city in the
Arabian Nights two weeks ago. And that which strikes me most--I say it
with regret and a pang of conscience--is certainly not the Paris of
former times, but that Paris which M. Buonaparte--I beg pardon, which the
Emperor--has called up around him, and identified forever with his reign.
It is what is new in Paris that strikes and enthrals me. Here I see the
life of France, and I belong to her tombs!"

"I don't quite understand you," said Lemercier. "If you think that
because your father and grandfather were Legitimists, you have not the
fair field of living ambition open to you under the Empire, you never
were more mistaken. 'Moyen age,' and even rococo, are all the rage.
You have no idea how valuable your name would be either at the Imperial
Court or in a Commercial Company. But with your fortune you are
independent of all but fashion and the Jockey Club.

"And 'apropos' of that, pardon me,--what villain made your coat?--let me
know; I will denounce him to the police." Half amused, half amazed,
Alain Marquis de Rochebriant looked at Frederic Lemercier much as a good-
tempered lion may look upon a lively poodle who takes a liberty with his
mane, and after a pause he replied curtly, "The clothes I wear at Paris
were made in Bretagne; and if the name of Rochebriant be of any value at
all in Paris, which I doubt, let me trust that it will make me
acknowledged as 'gentilhomme,' whatever my taste in a coat or whatever
the doctrines of a club composed--of jockeys."

"Ha, ha!" cried Lemercier, freeing himself from the arm of his friend,
and laughing the more irresistibly as he encountered the grave look of
the Marquis. "Pardon me,--I can't help it,--the Jockey Club,--composed