The sprightly romance of Marsac

Marsac returned within three hours, to be confronted by Fontaine with a pale face and Uncle Maurice’s letter.

For once, Marsac was staggered. The paragraph was already in print, and the afternoon papers containing it were being cried on the street. He read the letter carefully, then laid it down, saying, “It is impossible that he should return. Living on fifteen cents a day for twenty years must have impaired his constitution to that degree that he cannot stand the voyage.”

Fontaine, already in the depths of woe, seemed to sink deeper and deeper. Not so Marsac, whose cheerfulness never left him. All day the two friends sat in their garret, unable on account of Fontaine’s dilapidated clothes and Marsac’s want of shoes to go out and get anything to eat,—for they could still go to a restaurant near the newspaper office and get a dinner on credit. They both shrank from admitting their necessities by asking for an advance from the business office of their newspaper.

Marsac spent the day in patching and cleaning, with awkward industry, Fontaine’s torn coat and trousers. Never had Fontaine loved and admired him more. He sang and whistled all day long, made jokes, and pretended that doing without food and fire was rather an amusing experience. At nightfall he held up the torn and soiled coat and trousers for inspection. The poor fellow had done his best, but they were clearly not presentable. Not even then did his courage and spirits desert him. He laughed at his own failure, and said gaily,—

“Well, my boy, what a tale this will make to tell when we get rich! For half the pleasure of rich people consists in telling how happy they were when they had not a second shirt to their backs.”

At that moment a servant in the establishment opened the door without ceremony, and thrust in a huge box, with the name of “Charlevois, Tailor,” on it. Scarcely was the door shut, when the two young men tore open the box. There lay several suits of the handsomest mourning clothes imaginable, with hats and gloves to match; and on top of everything was pinned a letter. It was from Charlevois, one of the best tailors in Paris, saying that he had taken the liberty of sending Monsieur Auguste Fontaine several suits of clothes, asking his inspection of them. He had read in the papers that evening of Monsieur Maurice Fontaine’s death, and would be glad to supply Monsieur Auguste Fontaine’s mourning. Also that his son was in the stationery business, and had enclosed some samples of stationery.

The two young men gazed intently at each other. Then, without a word, Fontaine, with Marsac’s help, put on an evening suit, and then a top-coat, with crape-covered hat and black gloves. He certainly looked very handsome in his new outfit. It was almost the first time in his life that he had ever been really well dressed, and the elegantly simple costume brought out his aristocratic beauty. Marsac looked at him with the delight of a mother over a beautiful daughter dressed for her first ball. Fontaine walked up and down, surveying himself with satisfaction in the cracked mirror. He examined his old coat and trousers,—they looked worse than ever by comparison. His silence said eloquently, “I cannot take these gentlemanly habiliments off.” He put the hat on his head. With Marsac, he moved toward the door; they paused.

“This is the Rubicon,” said Marsac.

“The Rubicon is passed,” replied Fontaine, stepping out.

They went to the restaurant where they had credit to dinner, and were seen by twenty persons of their acquaintance. As they approached the desk, on entering, the cashier, a handsome girl, was glancing at an afternoon paper containing the paragraph about Uncle Maurice. She recognised Fontaine, whom she had seen before.

“Do you wish a private room, gentlemen?” she asked.

“Certainly,” answered Marsac, solemnly, who had not thought of it before. “Auguste, you would rather not dine in public to-day?”

Fontaine shook his head, and the two friends in silence, Fontaine with his eyes bent on the mourning hat he carried, went into a private dining-room. An obsequious waiter brought a card. Marsac ordered an excellent dinner with champagne.

When it came the sight of it was almost too much for the poor half-starved young fellows. It was the first time they had really dined in weeks. They made an excuse to send the waiter out of the room, when they hugged each other and began to dance wildly, and barely had time before he returned to scuttle back to their chairs and pull long faces while they devoured fish, flesh, and fowl, entrées, hors-d’oeuvres, and everything else eatable on the table. Marsac, in the waiter’s absence, begged Fontaine to spare the candelabra, while Fontaine caught Marsac in the act of chewing the paper off the marrons glacés.

“This,” said Marsac, while the waiter was out of the room (for they kept him on the trot), “may be called our first dress rehearsal. We are to appear before the public to-morrow,—you as the heir of your Uncle Maurice, I as the friend of the nephew of his uncle.”

“Do you think we have deceived the waiter?” anxiously asked Fontaine.

“Perfectly. He never saw us order such a dinner before; but I hope he will see us order a good many more like it. Look solemn—he is coming.”

And the waiter coming in found Marsac urging Fontaine to eat, who seemed to be in the depths of despondency. When the time came for feeing the man, Fontaine said sadly,—

“You, Marsac, must pay to-night. I forgot I had changed my clothes.”

“Certainly,” replied Marsac, clapping his hand to his pocket and producing the two francs—the last they had on earth, which he had taken the precaution to bring with him—and handing them to the waiter. Those two francs made everybody in the restaurant believe the story of Fontaine’s fortune.

After the dinner, which lasted for three hours, they went home, and Fontaine wrote a note on the black-edged paper to the editor of their paper, “La Lune,” asking for leave of absence for a few days, owing to the loss of a near relative. Marsac took it to the office. His fellow-workers crowded round him, asking questions about the paragraph which had appeared that afternoon. Marsac confirmed it, but declared they had not got any particulars as to the amount of the fortune.

“But I should say it will be under three millions,” he added with entire accuracy.

Next day Paris rang with the story. It cannot be denied that both Marsac and Fontaine were a little frightened at the sudden and overpowering success of their little romance. They had not counted upon the instant and enormous sensation it created. But there was now no retreat for them. Being once committed to Uncle Maurice, they had to abide by their own invention; and it taxed even Marsac’s powers to meet the emergency. Fontaine simply declared that he could not face the world in his new character, and kept close to his lodgings, to avoid interrogatories. Naturally that did still more to set the story on its legs; and when he began to receive letters of condolence mixed with congratulations, and was forced to reply to them on paper with a black border an inch deep and signed with inky sealing-wax, even he himself began to believe that his Uncle Maurice had died and left him a fortune.

Marsac, who was remarkably clever with his brush, made an excellent picture of Uncle Maurice out of the transformed bull-fighter, and by dint of artistically smoking it, the newness of the paint was taken off. He was, however, simply forced to invent a biography of Uncle Maurice, with names, dates, and events. The first time he was asked how Uncle Maurice made his money, he was obliged to say how; so he represented that it was all made in the wine-importing line.

“If I had had a moment to think, I should have said mining operations,” he said to Fontaine afterward; “but taken unawares, I hit upon the wine-business. And then I had to explain that he went against the traditions of his family by engaging in trade, but was immensely successful, so they forgave him. And then I drew a noble picture of Uncle Maurice,—for, look you, Fontaine, as we have profited by the old gentleman, the least we can do is to give him a good character. I have adorned him with every virtue. If he could come to life, I am sure he would be pleased with the reputation I have given him.”

“But, Marsac, he is alive! That is the maddening part. Suppose the real Uncle Maurice should come walking in here some fine day,—what would you say?”

“I should say, ‘Good morning, Monsieur Fontaine; delighted to see you. Have a cigar? We heard that you were dead.’ And the old gentleman would be so pleased at finding himself alive, that he would forgive us anything.”

Among the first persons to hear the story was Madame Fleury; and the hardest task before Marsac was when he was stopped by her in the entresol, one morning, with an inquiry whether the story was true or not about Fontaine’s uncle’s death.

“Alas! it is only too true,” replied Marsac, sorrowfully.

“I think Monsieur Auguste should have informed me of it,” said Madame Fleury, “considering our relations.”

“Ah, Madame, you, a widow, can have no idea of the bashfulness of a young man like Fontaine, in his first love affair. The relations of men and women are so changed now. I am barely thirty, but I remember when it was the lady who was diffident. But the last diffident woman, I understand, has been secured for the Jardin des Plantes.”

Madame Fleury heard this with a smile playing round her handsome mouth. “I hardly think that the engagement between Monsieur Auguste Fontaine and me can be called a love affair. It was a business arrangement, pure and simple. However, if this story about his Uncle Maurice and his fortune is true, then I shall look forward with more satisfaction than ever to the 15th of May. But why does not Monsieur Fontaine call to see me occasionally?”

“Bashfulness, Madame Fleury,—pure bashfulness. I tell you, men and women have changed places. I predict that in a few years a young man will no more think of calling on his fiancée than a few years back his fiancée would have called on him.”

Madame Fleury heard this, uttered in Marsac’s airiest manner, with the same inscrutable smile. When Marsac left her presence, after an hour’s laboured explanations, he had not the slightest certainty whether she believed in Uncle Maurice or not. He rather thought she did not, from her last remark,—which was that if Monsieur Fontaine really had inherited two million francs, she would be glad to have the two hundred he owed her.

However, to have got two hundred francs from Fontaine would have been like getting oysters out of a strawberry bed. As the days went on, he got a great many things, like the mourning clothes and black-edged paper; and he was pursued by tradesmen desiring him to open accounts with them. But not a franc had he. His absence from the newspaper office cut off his small salary there; and while dining at his favourite restaurant every day, smoking the best cigars and enjoying other luxuries, he often had not one sou to rattle against another. Marsac kept up his courage, though, by telling him that something would soon turn up which would enable them to pay their debts, escape from Madame Fleury’s house, and live like lords. And when that happy event was accomplished, Marsac promised that Fontaine should be rid of Madame Fleury, and in a position to ask the hand of Claire Duval, whom Fontaine grew every day more passionately in love with, although it had been months since he had seen her. Whenever Fontaine’s courage failed, Marsac always held out to him the hope of marrying Claire.

“Just let me catch old Duval,—I don’t like to go in search of him,”—cried Marsac, “and I will give him such an account of you that he will be throwing his daughter at your head. And as she is a sweet girl, and I believe is really in love with you, there will be a marriage, sure. The only thing on my conscience is, that I am putting a noose around your neck.”

“A noose! A garland, you mean! Ah, could I live to have Claire for my wife! But that infernal widow downstairs—”

“Don’t speak of your fiancée in that disrespectful manner,” cried Marsac, at the same time dodging Fontaine’s new hat, which flew in his direction.

One night about six weeks after Uncle Maurice’s advent, Fontaine was in their garret, waiting for Marsac to return. The room was as shabby as ever, but Fontaine was dressed in the height of the style, although still in the deepest mourning. His bright face, as he walked about whistling jovially, with his hands in his trousers pockets (which were empty, as usual), was in striking contrast to his livery of woe. Fontaine occasionally had spasms of fear concerning their ruse; but at twenty-five, with a good appetite, and enough to satisfy it, with love and hope and a friend like Marsac, one is apt to whistle jovially. In one corner of the room was a table with a delicious supper set out,—sent from the restaurant, which the two young men patronised liberally. On the rickety writing-table lay a letter, bearing the stamp of one of the leading theatres in Paris. In the intervals of walking about, and wondering why Marsac was so late, Fontaine would read and re-read this letter, with the most evident delight.

At last, just as Fontaine was beginning to be impatient, in walked Marsac, carrying his violin-case in his hand. He opened it without a word, and took out four bottles of champagne. Then in solemn silence he removed his tall hat, which proved to be full of flowers, and these he arranged in the middle of the supper-table.

“What are you up to now?” asked Fontaine, in surprise.

“Ladies to supper,” gravely replied Marsac.

Fontaine was astounded. Marsac habitually ran away from respectable women, declaring he was afraid of them; and for those of another kind he had nothing but the pity of a refined and honourable soul, which leaves to harder hearts and more evil natures the condemnation of those who sin because they are sinned against. Fontaine uttered only one word,—

“Ladies!”

“Yes,” said Marsac; “that is, they are ladies to me and to you,—for they are women, half-starved and hard-working. What does it matter that they are ballet-girls in a third-rate theatre? Listen. As I was coming home just now, I saw these two poor creatures standing in front of a pastry shop close by, eying the cakes in the window, and without a sou to buy anything with. I overheard them, as they sorrowfully recalled that their last franc had gone in white satin shoes for the ballet next week. I have been hungry myself, and so have you, and I felt for them in my pockets as well as in my heart; but I had no more money than they. I had credit, though, thanks to your admirable Uncle Maurice, and a good supper at home, and I said to them that for once they should be warmed and filled. They are of a grade in society that is not bound by conventionalities, and were quite willing to go anywhere for a good meal. So I told them to slip by the concierge,—they will be here in a few minutes,—and I went and got the wine and the flowers to make it a little more of a feast for the poor souls; and you and I, Fontaine, will be the better, not the worse, for this night’s work.”

“Marsac, you are the best fellow that ever lived,” cried Fontaine, hugging him. Fontaine was always hugging Marsac, and Marsac always responded by a pat on the head, such as a father gives a small boy. “And read this letter,” he continued, thrusting the letter in Marsac’s hand. It ran as follows:—

Fontaine capered about gleefully, while Marsac read this letter, and then handed him another note which seemed to give him almost equal pleasure. It was from a picture-dealer, and briefly announced that an offer of a thousand francs had been made for “A Rough Sea,” and he hesitated about taking it: there was a price marked on the picture,—fifty something; it couldn’t be fifty francs!

“But it was fifty francs, all the same,” cried Marsac; “and a thousand francs! Good heavens! We shall be as rich as the Rothschilds, and we shall be able to get away from these quarters and that dreadful woman downstairs, and I shall marry you to Claire Duval!”

Fontaine’s reply to this was humming a little song with a refrain, “Claire, I love thee!” which presently made him sigh and look very gloomy. Marsac, who knew what turn his thoughts were taking, said slyly,—

“I met old Duval to-day.”

Fontaine jumped as if he had been shot. “And what did he say? How is Claire? When are you going to let me out of this infernal confinement, so I can go to see the darling?”

“Fie! fie! and you an engaged man,” cried Marsac; at which Fontaine groaned and tore his hair. “But,” continued Marsac, “I have some good news for you. Old Duval has read all the accounts of Uncle Maurice, and has the most childlike faith in him; and I declare, Auguste, I begin to believe in the old fellow myself. Anyhow, Monsieur Duval talked with me a whole hour this afternoon, and you may depend upon it I stuffed him; and the result is—now, don’t go crazy—that he more than hinted at a match between you and Claire.”

Fontaine fell on the sofa in an ecstasy, murmuring, “Dear, darling Claire!”

“And he is coming to see you very soon, to congratulate you. I told him you were going nowhere on account of your recent bereavement; and, listen to this! The old fellow wants to oblige you; and as I mentioned, by way of corroborative testimony, that you were looking round for a country-seat, he said he would sell you a villa he has at Melun for ninety thousand francs. Now, I know that Maurepas, our editor-in-chief, is wild for that villa; and I have reason to think he will give a hundred and forty thousand francs for it. Do you see?”

“Yes,” said Fontaine. “I buy it for ninety thousand, and sell it for a hundred and forty thousand. But will it work?”

“Not if you jump down old Duval’s throat when he offers it to you.”

“I sha’n’t be able to prevent it.”

“Then you will be unworthy of your Uncle Maurice, and I shall be sorry to have provided you with such a relative.”

A sound was heard outside. Marsac listened intently, thinking it to be his two friends of the ballet; but it proved not.

“I wonder, as much afraid as you are of women,” said Fontaine, “that you should have had the courage to ask those two poor creatures here even for the pleasure of doing a kind action,—for nothing gives you so much pleasure as that.”

“Pooh!” replied Marsac. “It is not women I fear, it is matrimony; and I show my regard for the sex by remaining a bachelor. I feel that by not marrying I shall secure one woman, at least, from eternal misery.”

Again there was a noise outside the door; and this time it was the two ballet-girls,—Mademoiselle Marie and Mademoiselle Louise, as they introduced themselves. Marsac received them with as much kindness and respect as if they had been banker’s daughters; and as for the girls themselves, they were tawdry yet shabby, and extraordinarily painted and bedizened. But the divinity of woman-hood was not extinguished in them, and modesty itself would not have been abashed in the presence of the four assembled in the garret of No. 17 Rue Montignal.

Mademoiselle Marie and Mademoiselle Louise wished to be extremely elegant in the company in which they found themselves; but it must be admitted that they laughed rather loud, and talked excessively. However, their account of the way in which they slipped past the entresol was very amusing, and the two young men roared with laughter; and then the fun began. But at the very moment that two corks flew out with a loud report, the door came open with a bang, and Madame Schmid stalked in.

Not Banquo’s ghost made a greater sensation at a party than this stout Alsatian. Fontaine, following his usual tactics, ran behind the screen. Madame Schmid, with one rapid glance at the table and the champagne, uttered but one word, “Thieves!” and made a dash for Fontaine, whom she collared and dragged out.

“Oh, you pretty boy,” she screamed, “this is your poverty,—champagne and oysters and giving parties, when you can’t pay your wash-bill! I used to feel sorry for you when you were so poor; but now I know you are rolling in money, with twenty million francs left you in America, and owing a poor woman two hundred francs for washing,—that is, you and that slick-tongued Marsac yonder!”

Marsac was not “yonder,” but directly behind Madame Schmid, and holding a big tumbler of champagne in one hand, while with the other he deftly seized her round the waist, and began pouring the champagne down her throat. At the same time he was talking her down in vigorous tones, shouting,—

“My dear girl, you really oughtn’t to come here. It will ruin our reputations to have a handsome young thing like you found in our apartment.”

Madame Schmid, sputtering, protesting, but obliged to drink the champagne, willy-nilly, was still able to make a good deal of noise. “Oh, you hypocrite! you can’t honeyfuggle me—” Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, the champagne flowed down her throat.

“Honeyfuggle you? Oh, you bewitching creature, you honeyfuggle me! Another glass, Fontaine.”

Another tumbler followed the first, Madame Schmid trying to say, “Stop hugging me, you impudent—”

The young ladies enjoyed this excessively; and before the second glass was wholly disposed of, Madame Schmid was struggling with the emotions produced by the champagne, Marsac’s flattery, and wrath at her unpaid bill, but being a thrifty Alsatian, the last was by no means forgotten. Suddenly, amid all the laughing, choking, joking, and commotion, a voice was heard calling at the foot of the stairs,—

“Monsieur Marsac! Monsieur Fontaine! open the door and help me up these confounded narrow stairs! I am not built for such Alpine work as this.”

“Great heavens! it is old Duval!” exclaimed Fontaine, who had dropped limp into a chair at the first sound of this voice.

“Go and keep him below for a moment,” said Marsac; and with wonderful quickness he hustled the two girls, nothing loath, into the closet, where they willingly shut the door, tittering at their own predicament. It was something else, though, to get rid of Madame Schmid. Marsac had almost to drag her to the corridor door, she fighting like a tiger, and Marsac assuring her that it would forever destroy them should a young and handsome woman like her be found in their apartment. Barely was she shoved out, and scarcely had Marsac time to seat himself in a meditative attitude with a book, when Fontaine, with old Duval, entered; and while greeting him, Marsac could hear Madame Schmid prancing up and down the corridor in her wrath.

Monsieur Duval, broad, rubicund, benevolent, conceited, and with the true auriferous air which belongs to the vulgar rich, congratulated Fontaine on his accession of fortune. Fontaine received this modestly, while Marsac eulogised Uncle Maurice and pointed out the goodness indicated in every feature of the portrait hanging on the wall.

“Yes, yes,” said Monsieur Duval, “you have had a great stroke of luck, young man; and I hope you will be worthy of it.”

To which Fontaine replied that he hoped to prove himself entirely worthy of his Uncle Maurice’s goodness.

“And now,” cried Monsieur Duval, swelling out his waistcoat, “I must tell you that I have other objects in calling to see you to-night, besides congratulating you on your good fortune. One is, to sell you a piece of property at Melun; and the other is to ask you both to dine with me at my Passy villa very soon. I wish you to meet my niece Delphine, who has lately come to live with my daughter and me. Would to-morrow suit?”

“Perfectly,” cried Fontaine, eagerly, but was checked by Marsac with a look.

“I think you have the poorest memory I ever saw,” said Marsac, severely, to Fontaine. “Have you forgotten that to-morrow we dine with the Prince, and next day with the Marshal, the day after with the Archbishop?”

Duval, a little staggered by these magnificent names, remarked, “I thought you told me to-day that Monsieur Fontaine was not going into society on account of his mourning?”

“So he is not,” coolly responded Marsac. “These are merely little family affairs with people we have always known.”

This did not make old Duval any the less anxious to have them, and he named a day the next week, which Marsac and Fontaine, after an elaborate consultation of their notebooks, finally found they could accept.

“And now about the villa,” said the old brewer, standing with his feet wide apart and his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. “It’s a very pretty place at Melun; my daughter is very fond of it; and if you are looking for a country place, Monsieur Fontaine, you could not do better than take it, at ninety thousand francs.”

Fontaine, remembering Marsac’s injunction not to be too eager, hummed and ha’d a little for effect. He was deeply indebted to Monsieur Duval for his offer; ninety thousand was a mere bagatelle, etc. Old Duval persisted, and his motive was ridiculously clear; every other word was, “My daughter is fond of the Melun place,”—“My daughter could scarcely be persuaded to leave it even for our finer house at Passy.”

Marsac urged the apparently unwilling Fontaine to accept the offer, mentioning several countesses, duchesses, and princesses of their acquaintance who thought about buying places at Melun. At every mention of a title, the old brewer rose to the bait, and was a perfectly happy man when Fontaine agreed to take the place at ninety thousand, and expressed his gratitude to Monsieur Duval for favouring him with the purchase.

The old man then got on the subject of his daughter, varied with digressions on his niece Delphine, which seemed to amuse him very much. “A fine, handsome girl she is, but the ‘new woman’ with a vengeance. Believes in a woman’s having a mission, and all that, and is as deadly opposed to matrimony as our friend Marsac,”—at which Monsieur Duval cackled and chuckled with great enjoyment for some time. “By the way,” he continued, “I expect her and my daughter to call for me on their way from a dinner, and they will be here before long. Monsieur Fontaine, will you oblige me by telling the porter to direct them to wait awhile in case I should not be quite ready to go?”

Monsieur Duval had an object in getting Fontaine out of the way, for the moment the door closed upon him, he drew his chair up to Marsac’s, and began very seriously, and mopping his forehead in his anxiety: “You know, Monsieur Marsac, I have always thought extremely well of Monsieur Fontaine; and now that he has come into a snug fortune, I should not mind if he—if my daughter—” Here Monsieur Duval winked, and Marsac grinned appreciatively.

“I understand perfectly,” answered Marsac.

“About ten millions, I hear,” remarked Monsieur Duval, in a whisper.

“Oh, no, no!” replied Marsac, deprecatingly. “That is a gross exaggeration. I give you my word, Monsieur Duval, it is nothing like that. I know more about the matter than anybody except Fontaine, and I assure you that it is but two millions.”

“And how do you think Monsieur Fontaine feels toward my daughter?”

Marsac knitted his brows thoughtfully. “I really don’t know,” he said at last; “I have never heard Fontaine mention Mademoiselle Claire except in general terms; but I know she is a very charming girl, and any man might be glad and proud to have her. But, Monsieur Duval,” said Marsac, confidentially, “you have no idea how the poor fellow has been persecuted with propositions of the sort since his Uncle Maurice’s death. At the club the dukes and marquises are sometimes four deep around him, all with an eye on having him for a son-in-law; and as for the widows, the poor fellow has had to insure his life against their eating him up.”

This whetted old Duval’s desire considerably. Marsac, seeing this, kept on.

“Now, here is a letter from the Prince de Landais,” taking up Landais’s bill,—“I assure you, neither of us knows the man except in a business way—and here he writes, not only wanting Fontaine to marry his daughter, but actually asking for money in advance,—about six hundred and seventy-five francs,—and he takes the tone of a person already entitled to it!”

“A wretched, aristocratic pauper!” cried old Duval, indignantly. “At least, the man who marries my Claire will not have a worthless father-in-law, like this Prince de Landais, to prey upon him!”

“And here is a letter from Madame Schmid, or rather the Baroness Schmid,”—Marsac made this addition, seeing how quickly Monsieur Duval had jumped at every title he had named. “She is very particular about her title, because she has just got one. This woman is a great swell, but a rude, coarse creature, old enough to be Fontaine’s mother, and was once a washerwoman, I am told. By the way,”—here Marsac put his mouth to old Duval’s ear,—“she comes to this apartment in pursuit of him! He keeps out of her way, refuses to answer her letters, and then she pursues him here! She was in this room when you were announced below, and it was with the greatest difficulty we got her out. She is in the corridor still, I believe.”

Marsac rose, and taking the old brewer by the hand, they tipped to the corridor door. Monsieur Duval knelt down, and through the keyhole saw Madame Schmid rampaging up and down the corridor like a caged lioness.

“Great heavens!” whispered old Duval, “no one can blame Monsieur Fontaine from running away from such a woman!”

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when, Madame Schmid making a lunge at the door, it flew open, knocking Monsieur Duval sprawling. Madame Schmid dashed in, walking over the prostrate Monsieur Duval as if he had been a frog, and began to harangue Marsac violently, swinging her arms about like a Dutch windmill.

“Oh, you deceiver! I know it isn’t worth while to do anything with Monsieur Fontaine,—you have him under your thumb; but I will bring you both to terms, that I promise you. And where has Monsieur Fontaine gone? You have spirited him out of the way,—I know it; you do it every time I come!”

Marsac’s only reply was to catch her round the waist, and say soothingly, as he dragged her back to the door, “My dear girl, you will certainly ruin Fontaine’s reputation if you act in this manner.”

“I don’t care a fig for my reputation,” bawled Madame Schmid,—“it is money I am after; and money I mean to have, out of Monsieur Fontaine!”

Marsac managed to get her outside the door, which he took the precaution to lock behind her, and said as he stepped back into the room, “That’s a sample of what poor Fontaine has had to put up with since he came into his money. And there is another one—a widow—who is worse than all.”

“Oh, Jupiter!” was Monsieur Duval’s exclamation, as he picked himself up off the floor, and dusted his knees and elbows.

“A very handsome woman, a comtesse,—the Comtesse de Fleury. She got a written promise out of Fontaine, in a moment of weakness—you understand?”

“Yes—a widow and a moment of weakness! I understand,” said the old brewer, feelingly.

“It isn’t of the slightest legal value, though, as I can testify that it was obtained under duress; and Fontaine would give half he is worth to get rid of her.”

As Marsac said this about the written agreement, he could not help wishing, with all his heart, that he had it that moment in his possession.

Monsieur Duval reflected seriously for some minutes before speaking. “I acknowledge to you,” he said, “that I regard a widow in an affair of this sort as a person to be reckoned with; and it is I who tell you so, and I have a head on my shoulders. Now, I hear you have great influence with Monsieur Fontaine—”

“Not a particle,” Marsac protested vigorously.

“Nonsense! You are trying to fool me! But I will say this to you. Taking into account my daughter’s fancy for your friend Fontaine, and his good character and his good birth and his fortune, if you can bring about an—arrangement—you understand—it will be for the happiness of the young people.”

“I would do anything for Fontaine’s happiness,” said Marsac.

“Then, couldn’t you—ahem—the widow—Now, you are yourself a very attractive fellow. Perhaps the widow might make an exchange?”

“Take me, do you mean? My dear sir, I would do anything on earth for Fontaine but one; and that is, to get married.”

“Ha! ha! That’s the way Delphine talks.”

“I haven’t the remotest idea how to make an offer. It would be like a horse trying to play the fiddle.”

“Oh, well, you need not mind about that, with a widow. She will do the business for you.”

“She shall not have a chance, if I can help it—that is,” stammered Marsac, as he recollected that Madame Fleury had already proposed to him. “To be very confidential, this particular widow has—er—before entangling Fontaine—in an interview with me—” Marsac stopped, blushing; and Monsieur Duval, closing one eye, playfully poked him in the ribs.

“My dear young friend,” said he, with an air of superior wisdom, “she did not want you very much, else she would have had you. Even I have had to use all my astuteness to keep from being gobbled up by widows. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty where widows are concerned. But if you won’t listen to my proposition in that respect, I am sure you will to one upon another subject. I intend, next month, reorganising my breweries into a stock company, and I have positive assurances that the shares will command a premium. If you and your friend Fontaine can raise ten thousand francs within the next week, I can let you in on the ground floor; and within three weeks you will make fifty thousand francs each.”

“You shall have my cheque to-morrow morning,” promptly answered Marsac, who had not a sou to his credit or in hand.

Old Duval then began to examine the room. The supper-table seemed to strike him favourably, but the room did not. “It seems to me,” he said, “that—ahem—your friend might have better quarters. This is pretty high up.”

“Yes,” answered Marsac, “but we remain here on account of the widow, the Comtesse de Fleury; and our surroundings are more valuable than you think, perhaps. We have been collectors in our time, I assure you. Do you see that sofa?”

“Yes,” said Monsieur Duval, punching the poor old sofa; “but it’s moth-eaten. It ought to be mended here.”

“It would be sacrilege to touch that sofa. It belonged to Peter the Great. He made that hole in it. I forget exactly what we paid for it, but it is insured for forty thousand francs.”

Monsieur Duval’s mouth came wide open with surprise.

“And this mirror,” kept on Marsac, pursuing his advantage. “It is cracked—but by whom? By Madame Pompadour. One day, the King was very disobliging to her, and she flew into a passion. She picked up a—” Here Marsac halted, but his eye travelling round the room fell on their rusty bellows; he resumed glibly: “She picked up a pair of bellows, and threw them at the King. His Majesty dodged, and smash went the bellows against the mirror,—and here are the veritable bellows. The mirror and bellows are worth, together, about twenty-five thousand francs.”

Old Duval examined them with the highest respect. “I see,” said he, “they are immensely valuable.”

“And do you see this violin?” Marsac handed the old brewer the violin.

“Ah!” cried Monsieur Duval, delighted to show he knew something about violins, “a Stradivarius, perhaps?”

“My dear sir,” said Marsac, in a tone of pity, “that violin was old when Stradivarius was young. It is the identical instrument that Nero fiddled on when Rome was burning!”

This reduced Monsieur Duval to an amazed silence, during which they heard laughter and voices on the stairs, and the door opened, admitting Fontaine and two remarkably pretty girls.

“Dear papa!” cried one of them, “just as we got to the door the wheel came off the carriage, and the coachman had to go to a stable after another carriage—and Monsieur Fontaine brought us up here.”

“Quite right,” replied Monsieur Duval, looking fondly at his daughter. “You know Monsieur Marsac; but I must present him to you, Delphine. Oh, you two should get on famously,—you are both such haters of marriage!”

The instant Marsac’s eyes lighted on Delphine, he felt a singular sensation. She was slight and tall, with a patrician beauty of face and figure, and an air of self-possession second only to Madame Fleury’s. Delphine, too, felt an instant attraction toward Marsac, with his bright eyes, his alert look of intelligence, and his gentlemanly figure. This perception of Marsac’s charm caused her to say lightly, yet with a faint blush,—

“I am not exactly a hater of marriage. I only regard it as a primitive and somewhat unintelligent arrangement.”

The effect of these few words from the lips of a woman he had seen but sixty seconds, produced a strange effect on Marsac. He felt a slight chill of disappointment; but he answered in his old strain, “Just what I have often longed to say, Mademoiselle, but never had the courage.”

“But I have,” remarked Delphine, showing her beautiful teeth in a smile. “Women, you know, have much more real courage than men. Especially is this true in times of great calamity.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Marsac, with energy. “I have often noticed, at the wedding ceremony, the bride is always much more composed than the groom.”

Being launched into the discussion, Delphine’s next blow at the masculine sex was this: “One phase of the question has frequently occurred to me. Does the higher education unfit men for marriage?”

Marsac shook his head, unable to find an answer to this proposition, which he frankly acknowledged had never before presented itself to him.

Fontaine and Claire had listened to this in silence, but the furtive looks exchanged between them showed a silent protest against it, and also a very deep interest in each other. Old Duval laughed at the discussion between Marsac and Delphine, and then they gathered round the table to have a glass of champagne while waiting for the carriage. Both the young men urged Monsieur Duval and the young ladies to partake of what Marsac called their frugal supper, and Monsieur Duval chuckled at the idea of such frugality, while declining it.