the best manager in the world. He alone achieves the difficult art of
uniting thrift with show. It is your Provincial who comes to Paris in
the freshness of undimmed youth, who sows his whole life on its barren
streets. I guess the rest: Alain is ruined." Enguerrand, who certainly
was so far a born Parisian that with all his shrewdness and _savoir
faire_, he had a wonderfully sympathetic heart, very easily moved, one
way or the other--Enguerrand winced at his elder kinsman's words
complimentarily reproachful, and said in unwonted tones of humility:
"Cousin, you are cruel, but you are in the right. I did not calculate
sufficiently on the chances of Alain's head being turned. Hear my
excuse. He seemed to me so much more thoughtful than most at our age
are, so much more stately and proud; well, also so much more pure, so
impressed with the responsibilities of station, so bent on retaining the
old lands in Bretagne; by habit and rearing so simple and self-denying,
--that I took it for granted he was proof against stronger temptations
than those which a light nature like my own puts aside with a laugh. And
at first I had no reason to think myself deceived, when, some months ago,
I heard that he was getting into debt, losing at play, paying court to
female vampires, who drain the life-blood of those on whom they fasten
their fatal lips. Oh, then I spoke to him earnestly!"

"And in vain?"

"In vain. A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, whom you may have
heard of--"

"Certainly, and met; a friend of Louvier's--"

"The same man--has obtained over him an influence which so far subdues
mine, that he almost challenged me when I told him his friend was a