ousand francs, the savings of a lifetime. With its north aspect,
the house looks gloomy enough seen from the street, but the back looks
towards the south over the courtyard, with a rather pretty garden beyond
it. As the President occupied the whole of the first floor, once the
abode of a great financier of the time of Louis XIV., and the second
was let to a wealthy old lady, the house wore a look of dignified repose
befitting a magistrate's residence. President Camusot had invested all
that he inherited from his mother, together with the savings of twenty
years, in the purchase of the splendid Marville estate; a chateau (as
fine a relic of the past as you will find to-day in Normandy) standing
in a hundred acres of park land, and a fine dependent farm, nominally
bringing in twelve thousand francs per annum, though, as it cost the
President at least a thousand crowns to keep up a state almost princely
in our days, his yearly revenue, "all told," as the saying is, was a
bare nine thousand francs. With this and his salary, the President's
income amounted to about twenty thousand francs; but though to all
appearance a wealthy man, especially as one-half of his father's
property would one day revert to him as the only child of the first
marriage, he was obliged to live in Paris as befitted his official
position, and M. and Mme. de Marville spent almost the whole of their
incomes. Indeed, before the year 1834 they felt pinched.

This family schedule sufficiently explains why Mlle. de Marville, aged
three-and-twenty, was still unwed, in spite of a hundred thousand francs
of dowry and tempting prospects, frequently, skilfully, but so far
vainly, held out. For the past five years Pons had listened to Mme. la
Presidente's lamentations as she beheld one young lawyer after another
led to the altar, while all the newly appointed judges at the Tribunal
were fathers of families already; and she, all this time, had displayed
Mlle. de Marville's brilliant expectations before the undazzled eyes of
young Vicomte Popinot, eldest son of the great man of the drug trade,
he of whom it was said by the envious tongues of the neighborhood of the
Rue des Lombards, that the Revolution of July had been brought about at
least as much for his particular benefit as for the sake of the Orleans
branch.

Arrived at the corner of the Rue de Choiseul and the Rue de Hanovre,
Pons suffered from the inexplicable emotions which torment clear
consciences; for