Many persons envied the quiet existence of this old bachelor, spent on
whist, boston, backgammon, reversi, and piquet, all well played, on
dinners well digested, snuff gracefully inhaled, and tranquil walks
about the town. Nearly all Alencon believed this life to be exempt
from ambitions and serious interests; but no man has a life as simple
as envious neighbors attribute to him. You will find in the most
out-of-the way villages human mollusks, creatures apparently dead, who
have passions for lepidoptera or for conchology, let us say,--beings
who will give themselves infinite pains about moths, butterflies, or
the concha Veneris. Not only did the chevalier have his own particular
shells, but he cherished an ambitious desire which he pursued with a
craft so profound as to be worthy of Sixtus the Fifth: he wanted to
marry a certain rich old maid, with the intention, no doubt, of making
her a stepping-stone by which to reach the more elevated regions of
the court. There, then, lay the secret of his royal bearing and of his
residence in Alencon.



CHAPTER II

SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS

On a Wednesday morning, early, toward the middle of spring, in the
year 16,--such was his mode of reckoning,--at the moment when the
chevalier was putting on his old green-flowered damask dressing-gown,
he heard, despite the cotton in his ears, the light step of a young
girl who was running up the stairway. Presently three taps were
discreetly struck upon the door; then, without waiting for any
response, a handsome girl slipped like an eel into the room occupied