day. His rank itself seemed to him a waste-paper title-deed to a
heritage long lapsed. Not thus the princely seigneurs of Rochebriant
made their 'debut' at the capital of their nation. They had had the
'entree' to the cabinets of their kings; they had glittered in the halls
of Versailles; they had held high posts of distinction in court and camp;
the great Order of St. Louis had seemed their hereditary appanage. His
father, though a voluntary exile in manhood, had been in childhood a
king's page, and throughout life remained the associate of princes; and
here, in an 'avoue's soiree,' unknown, unregarded, an expectant on an
'avoue's' patronage, stood the last lord of Rochebriant.

It is easy to conceive that Alain did not stay long. But he stayed long
enough to convince him that on L200 a year the polite society of Paris,
even as seen at M. Gandrin's, was not for him. Nevertheless, a day or
two after, he resolved to call upon the nearest of his kinsmen to whom
his aunt had given him letters. With the Count de Vandemar, one of his
fellow-nobles of the sacred Faubourg, he should be no less Rochebriant,
whether in a garret or a palace. The Vandemars, in fact, though for many
generations before the First Revolution a puissant and brilliant family,
had always recognized the Rochebriants as the head of their house,--the
trunk from which they had been slipped in the fifteenth century, when a
younger son of the Rochebriants married a wealthy heiress and took the
title with the lands of Vandemar.

Since then the two families had often intermarried. The present count
had a reputation for ability, was himself a large proprietor, and might
furnish advice to guide Alain in his negotiations with M. Gandrin. The
Hotel do Vandemar stood facing the old Hotel de Rochebriant; it was less
spacious, but not less venerable, gloomy, and prison-like.