t your own
house, or at the office of the journal?"

"No," said Lousteau, "to-morrow I will come here, at the same hour, if
that is convenient to you."

"Perfectly," replied la Peyrade, bowing out his visitor, whom he was
inclined to think more consequential than able.

By the manner in which the barrister had received the proposition to
become an intermediary to Thuillier, the reader must have seen that
a rapid revolution had taken place in his ideas. Even if he had not
received that extremely disquieting letter from the president of the
order of barristers, the new situation in which Thuillier would be
placed if elected to the Chamber gave him enough to think about.
Evidently his dear good friend would have to come back to him, and
Thuillier's eagerness for election would deliver him over, bound hand
and foot. Was it not the right moment to attempt to renew his marriage
with Celeste? Far from being an obstacle to the good resolutions
inspired by his amorous disappointment and his incipient brain fever,
such a finale would ensure their continuance and success. Moreover, if
he received, as he feared, one of those censures which would ruin
his dawning prospects at the bar, it was with the Thuilliers, the
accomplices and beneficiaries of the cause of his fall, that his
instinct led him to claim an asylum.

With these thoughts stirring in his mind la Peyrade obeyed the summons
and went to see the president of the order of barristers.

He was not mistaken; a very circumstantial statement of his whole
proceeding in the matter of the house had been laid before his brethren
of the bar; and the highest dignitary of the order, after stating
that an anonymous denunciation ought always to be received with
great distrust, told him that he was ready to receive and welcome an
explanation. La Peyrade dared not entrench himself in absolute denial;
the hand from which he believed the blow had come seemed to him too
resolute and too able not to hold the proofs as well. But, while
admitting the facts in general, he endeavored to give them an acceptable
coloring. In this, he saw that he had failed, when the president said to
him:--

"After the vacation which is now beginning I shall report to the Council
of the order the charges made against you, and the statements by which
you have defended yourself. The Council alone has the right to decide on
a matter of such importance."

Thus dismissed, la Peyrade felt that his whole future a