hildhood, the secret counsels
of his seniors had assigned to him. Despite this, he had said he would
never marry; he made, he said, no pretensions to severe
conscientiousness, or to being better than others, but--as between his
Maker and himself--he had forfeited the right to wed, they all knew how.
But the Fusiliers had become very angry and Numa, finding strife about
to ensue just when without unity he could not bring an undivided clan
through the torrent of the revolution, had "nobly sacrificed a little
sentimental feeling," as his family defined it, by breaking faith with
the mother of the man now standing at Joseph Frowenfeld's elbow, and who
was then a little toddling boy. It was necessary to save the party--nay,
that was a slip; we should say, to save the family; this is not a
parable. Yet Numa loved his wife. She bore him a boy and a girl, twins;
and as her son grew in physical, intellectual, and moral symmetry, he
indulged the hope that--the ambition and pride of all the various
Grandissimes now centering in this lawful son, and all strife being
lulled--he should yet see this Honore right the wrongs which he had not
quite dared to uproot. And Honore inherited the hope and began to make
it an intention and aim even before his departure (with his half-brother
the other Honore) for school in Paris, at the early age of fifteen. Numa
soon after died, and Honore, after various fortunes in Paris, London,
and elsewhere, in the care, or at least company, of a pious uncle in
holy orders, returned to the ancestral mansion. The father's will--by
the law they might have set it aside, but that was not their way--left
the darker Honore the bulk of his fortune, the younger a competency. The
latter--instead of taking office, as an ancient Grandissime should have
done--to the dismay and mortification of his kindred, established
himself in a prosperous commercial business. The elder bought houses and
became a _rentier_.

* * * * *

The landlord handed the apothecary the following writing:

MR. JOSEPH FROWENFELD:

Think not that anybody is to be either poisoned by me nor yet
to be made a sufferer by the exercise of anything by me of
the character of what is generally known as grigri, otherwise
magique. This, sir, I do beg your permission to offer my
assurance to you of the same. Ah, no! it is not for that! I
am the victim of another entirely and a far differente