"Not exactly so," replied M. de Mauleon, imperturbably--"better fitted to
establish a good government in lieu of the bad one he had fought against,
and the much worse governments that would seek to turn France into a
madhouse, and make the maddest of the inmates the mad doctor!" He turned
away, and here their conversation ended.

But it so impressed Isaura, that the same night she concluded her letter
to Madame de Grantmesnil, by giving a sketch of its substance, prefaced
by an ingenuous confession that she felt less sanguine confidence in the
importance of the applauses which had greeted the Emperor at the
Saturday's ceremonial, and ending thus: "I can but confusedly transcribe
the words of this singular man, and can give you no notion of the manner
and the voice which made them eloquent. Tell me, can there be any truth
in his gloomy predictions? I try not to think so, but they seem to rest
over that brilliant hall of the Louvre like an ominous thunder-cloud."




CHAPTER II.

The Marquis de Rochebriant was seated in his pleasant apartment, glancing
carelessly at the envelopes of many notes and letters lying yet unopened
on his breakfast-table. He had risen late at noon, for he had not gone
to bed till dawn. The night had been spent at his club--over the card-
table--by no means to the pecuniary advantage of the Marquis. The reader
will have learned, through the conversation recorded in a former chapter
between De Mauleon and Enguerrand de Vandemar, that the austere Seigneur
Breton had become a fast _viveur_ of Paris. He had long since spent the