claim upon his pity and regard; to be poor and friendless was the best
appeal to his kindness. He spent his evenings sometimes in the great
dreary desert of a salon, and listened respectfully while Mademoiselle
Servin, the young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Gretry
on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of those
instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the very ghost of
music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour. To
him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young
men.

"They mock themselves of everything--even the religion!" she exclaimed,
with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent.
But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of
the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I
cannot to them. I, who speak to you--I, too, come of a good old race, and
there is sympathy between we others."

And then, after babbling to him of her lost station, the lady would
entertain him with some dainty little supper with which she was wont to
indulge herself and her lady boarders, when the students--who were
treated something after the manner of school-boys--were out of doors.

For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian life--not
altogether idle, but not altogether industrious--amusing himself a great
deal, and learning very little; moderate in his expenditure, when
compared with his fellow-students, but no small drain upon the funds of
the little family at home. In sooth, this good old Norman family had in a
pecuniary sense sunk very low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down
house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful face, and
took things pleasantly. A very humble English farmer would have despised