t, poor innocent. Young men are very
simple-minded nowadays! Here it is."

"Rue du Sentier, No. 5," said Monsieur de Fontaine, trying to recall
among all the information he had received, something which might concern
the stranger. "What the devil can it mean? Messrs. Palma, Werbrust &
Co., wholesale dealers in muslins, calicoes, and printed cotton goods,
live there.--Stay, I have it: Longueville the deputy has an interest in
their house. Well, but so far as I know, Longueville has but one son
of two-and-thirty, who is not at all like our man, and to whom he gave
fifty thousand francs a year that he might marry a minister's daughter;
he wants to be made a peer like the rest of 'em.--I never heard him
mention this Maximilien. Has he a daughter? What is this girl Clara?
Besides, it is open to any adventurer to call himself Longueville.
But is not the house of Palma, Werbrust & Co. half ruined by some
speculation in Mexico or the Indies? I will clear all this up."

"You speak a soliloquy as if you were on the stage, and seem to account
me a cipher," said the old admiral suddenly. "Don't you know that if he
is a gentleman, I have more than one bag in my hold that will stop any
leak in his fortune?"

"As to that, if he is a son of Longueville's, he will want nothing;
but," said Monsieur de Fontaine, shaking his head from side to side,
"his father has not even washed off the stains of his origin. Before the
Revolution he was an attorney, and the DE he has since assumed no more
belongs to him than half of his fortune."

"Pooh! pooh! happy those whose fathers were hanged!" cried the admiral
gaily.

Three or four days after this memorable day, on one of those fine
mornings in the month of November, which show the boulevards cleaned by
the sharp cold of an early frost, Mademoiselle de Fontaine, wrapped in a
new style of fur cape, of which she wished to set the fashion, went out
with two of her sisters-in-law, on whom she had been wont to discharge
her most cutting remarks. The three women were tempted to the drive,
less by their desire to try a very elegant carriage, and wear gowns
which were to set the fashion for the winter, than by their wish to see
a cape which a friend had observed in a handsome lace and linen shop at
the corner of the Rue de la Paix. As soon as they were in the shop the
Baronne de Fontaine pulled Emilie by the sleeve, and pointed out to her
Maximilien Longueville seated behind the desk, and engaged