Duplessis entered abruptly, and with a countenance much disturbed from
its wonted saturnine composure.

"Marquis, what is this I have just heard from the Duchesse de Tarascon?
Can it be? You ask military service in this ill-omened war?--you?"

"My dear and best friend," said Alain, very much startled, "I should have
thought that you, of all men in the world, would have most approved of my
request--you, so devoted an Imperialist--you, indignant that the
representative of one of these families, which the First Napoleon so
eagerly and so vainly courted, should ask for the grade of sous-
lieutenant in the armies of Napoleon the Third--you, who of all men know
how ruined are the fortunes of a Rochebriant--you, feel surprised that he
clings to the noblest heritage his ancestors have left to him--their
sword! I do not understand you."

"Marquis," said Duplessis, seating himself, and regarding Alain with a
look in which were blended the sort of admiration and the sort of
contempt with which a practical man of the world, who, having himself
gone through certain credulous follies, has learned to despise the
follies, but retains a reminiscence of sympathy with the fools they
bewitch, "Marquis, pardon me; you talk finely, but you do not talk common
sense. I should be extremely pleased if your Legitimist scruples had
allowed you to solicit, or rather to accept, a civil appointment not
unsuited to your rank, under the ablest sovereign, as a civilian, to whom
France can look for rational liberty combined with established order.
Such openings to a suitable career you have rejected; but who on earth
could expect you, never trained to military service, to draw a sword
hitherto sacred to the Bourbons, on behalf of a cause which the madness,
I do not say of France but of Paris, has enforced on a sovereign against