The poor Chevalier de Valois retained from his former life the need of
bestowing gallant protection, a quality of the seigneurs of other
days. Faithful to the system of the "petite maison," he liked to
enrich women,--the only beings who know how to receive, because they
can always return. But the poor chevalier could no longer ruin himself
for a mistress. Instead of the choicest bonbons wrapped in bank-bills,
he gallantly presented paper-bags full of toffee. Let us say to the
glory of Alencon that the toffee was accepted with more joy than la
Duthe ever showed at a gilt service or a fine equipage offered by the
Comte d'Artois. All these grisettes fully understood the fallen
majesty of the Chevalier de Valois, and they kept their private
familiarities with him a profound secret for his sake. If they were
questioned about him in certain houses when they carried home the
linen, they always spoke respectfully of the chevalier, and made him
out older than he really was; they talked of him as a most respectable
monsieur, whose life was a flower of sanctity; but once in their own
regions they perched on his shoulders like so many parrots. He liked
to be told the secrets which washerwomen discover in the bosom of
households, and day after day these girls would tell him the cancans
which were going the round of Alencon. He called them his "petticoat
gazettes," his "talking feuilletons." Never did Monsieur de Sartines
have spies more intelligent and less expensive, or minions who showed
more honor while displaying their rascality of mind. So it may be said
that in the mornings, while breakfasting, the chevalier usually amused
himself as much as the saints in heaven.

Suzanne was one of his favorites, a clever, ambitious girl, made of
the stuff of a Sophie Arnold, and handsome withal, as the handsomest
courtesan invited by Titian to pose on black velvet for a model of
Venus; although her face, fine about the eyes and forehead,