professional moneymaker, whose qualities of head were so acknowledged
that a compliment to them would be a hollow impertinence, and whose
qualities of heart had never yet received a compliment!

Duplessis started from his seat and embraced Alain, murmuring, "Listen to
me, I love you--I never had a son--be mine--Rochebriant shall be my
daughter's dot."

Alain returned the embrace, and then recoiling, said: "Father, your first
desire must be honour for your son. You have guessed my secret--I have
learned to love Valerie. Seeing her out in the world, she seemed like
other girls, fair and commonplace--seeing her--at your house, I have said
to myself, 'There is the one girl fairer than all others in my eyes, and
the one individual to whom all other girls are commonplace.'"

"Is that true?--is it?"

"True! does a _gentilhomme_ ever lie? And out of that love for her has
grown this immovable desire to be something worthy of her--something that
may lift me from the vulgar platform of men who owe all to ancestors,
nothing to themselves. Do you suppose for one moment that I, saved from
ruin and penury by Valerie's father, could be base enough to say to her,
'In return be Madame la Marquise de Rochebriant'? Do you suppose that I,
whom you would love and respect as son, could come to you and say: 'I am
oppressed by your favours--I am crippled with debts--give me your
millions and we are quits.' No, Duplessis! You, so well descended
yourself--so superior as man amongst men that you would have won name and
position had you been born the son of a shoeblack,--you would eternally
despise the noble who, in days when all that we Bretons deem holy in
noblesse are subjected to ridicule and contempt, should so vilely forget