at on your application the Court will act with due courtesy.

"There is a leading fact put forward by Madame d'Espard, the most
serious of all, of which I must beg for an explanation," said the judge
after a pause. "It refers to the dissipation of your fortune to the
advantage of a certain Madame Jeanrenaud, the widow of a bargemaster--or
rather, to that of her son, Colonel Jeanrenaud, for whom you are said to
have procured an appointment, to have exhausted your influence with the
King, and at last to have extended such protection as secures him a good
marriage. The petition suggests that such a friendship is more devoted
than any feelings, even those which morality must disapprove----"

A sudden flush crimsoned the Marquis' face and forehead, tears even
started to his eyes, for his eyelashes were wet, then wholesome pride
crushed the emotions, which in a man are accounted a weakness.

"To tell you the truth, monsieur," said the Marquis, in a broken voice,
"you place me in a strange dilemma. The motives of my conduct were to
have died with me. To reveal them I must disclose to you some secret
wounds, must place the honor of my family in your keeping, and must
speak of myself, a delicate matter, as you will fully understand. I
hope, monsieur, that it will all remain a secret between us. You will,
no doubt, be able to find in the formulas of the law one which
will allow of judgment being pronounced without any betrayal of my
confidences."

"So far as that goes, it is perfectly possible, Monsieur le Marquis."

"Some time after my marriage," said M. d'Espard, "my wife having run
into considerable expenses, I was obliged to have recourse to borrowing.
You know what was the position of noble families during the Revolution;
I had not been able to keep a steward or a man of business. Nowadays
gentlemen are for the most part obliged to manage their affairs
themselves. Most of my title-deeds had been brought to Paris, from
Languedoc, Provence, or le Comtat, by my father, who dreaded, and not
without reason, the inquisition which family title-deeds, and what was
then styled the 'parchments' of the privileged class, brought down on
the owners.

"Our name is Negrepelisse; d'Espard is a title acquired in the time of
Henri IV. by a marriage which brought us the estates and titles of the
house of d'Espard, on condition of our bearing an escutcheon of pretence
on our coat-of-arms, those of the house of d'Espard, an old family of
B