the probability is that you will not succeed: there will come one or two
bad seasons, the farmers will fail to pay, the mortgagee will foreclose,
and you may find yourself, after twenty years of anxiety and torment,
prematurely old and without a sou.

"Course the second. Rochebriant, though so heavily encumbered as to
yield you some such income as your father gave to his chef de cuisine,
is still one of those superb 'terres' which bankers and Jews and stock-
jobbers court and hunt after, for which they will give enormous sums.
If you place it in good hands, I do not doubt that you could dispose
of the property within three months, on terms that would leave you a
considerable surplus, which, invested with judgment, would afford you
whereon you could live at Paris in a way suitable to your rank and age.
Need we go further?--does this course smile to you?"

"Pass on, Count; I will defend to the last what I take from my ancestors,
and cannot voluntarily sell their roof-tree and their tombs."

"Your name would still remain, and you would be just as well received
in Paris, and your 'noblesse' just as implicitly conceded, if all Judaea
encamped upon Rochebriant. Consider how few of us 'gentilshommes' of the
old regime have any domains left to us. Our names alone survive: no
revolution can efface them."

"It may be so, but pardon me; there are subjects on which we cannot
reason,--we can but feel. Rochebriant may be torn from me, but I cannot
yield it."

"I proceed to the third course. Keep the chateau and give up its
traditions; remain 'de facto' Marquis of Rochebriant, but accept the new