ult, the rarities of
painting--none of these things so much as aroused their curiosity; they
were waiting for the sun to arise and shine upon these treasures. Still,
they were surprised by the beauty of some of the Etruscan trinkets and
the solid value of the snuff-boxes, and out of politeness they went into
ecstasies over some Florentine bronzes which they held in their hands
when Mme. Cibot announced M. Brunner! They did not turn; they took
advantage of a superb Venetian mirror framed in huge masses of carved
ebony to scan this phoenix of eligible young men.

Frederic, forewarned by Wilhelm, had made the most of the little hair
that remained to him. He wore a neat pair of trousers, a soft shade of
some dark color, a silk waistcoat of superlative elegance and the very
newest cut, a shirt with open-work, its linen hand-woven by a Friesland
woman, and a blue-and-white cravat. His watch chain, like the head of
his cane, came from Messrs. Florent and Chanor; and the coat, cut by old
Graff himself, was of the very finest cloth. The Suede gloves proclaimed
the man who had run through his mother's fortune. You could have seen
the banker's neat little brougham and pair of horses mirrored in the
surface of his speckless varnished boots, even if two pairs of sharp
ears had not already caught the sound of wheels outside in the Rue de
Normandie.

When the prodigal of twenty years is a kind of chrysalis from which
a banker emerges at the age of forty, the said banker is usually
an observer of human nature; and so much the more shrewd if, as in
Brunner's case, he understands how to turn his German simplicity to good
account. He had assumed for the occasion the abstracted air of a man who
is hesitating between family life and the dissipations of bachelorhood.
This expression in a Frenchified German seemed to Cecile to be in the
highest degree romantic; the descendant of the Virlaz was a second
Werther in her eyes--where is the girl who will not allow herself to
weave a little novel about her marriage? Cecile thought herself the
happiest of women when Brunner, looking round at the magnificent works
of art so patiently collected during forty years, waxed enthusiastic,
and Pons, to his no small satisfaction, found an appreciative admirer of
his treasures for the first time in his life.

"He is poetical," the young lady said to herself; "he sees millions in
the things. A poet is a man that cannot count and leaves his wife to
look afte