filled a couple of letters to bursting with
judgments, appeals, orders of the court, distress-warrants, application
for stay of proceedings, and all the rest of it; to put it briefly, they
had bills for three thousand two hundred francs odd centimes, for
which they had given five hundred francs; the transfer being made under
private seal, with special power of attorney, to save the expense of
registration. Now it so happened at this juncture, Maxime, being of ripe
age, was seized with one of the fancies peculiar to the man of fifty--"

"Antonia!" exclaimed La Palferine. "That Antonia whose fortune I made by
writing to ask for a toothbrush!"

"Her real name is Chocardelle," said Malaga, not over well pleased by
the fine-sounding pseudonym.

"The same," continued Desroches.

"It was the only mistake Maxime ever made in his life. But what would
you have, no vice is absolutely perfect?" put in Bixiou.

"Maxime had still to learn what sort of a life a man may be led into by
a girl of eighteen when she is minded to take a header from her honest
garret into a sumptuous carriage; it is a lesson that all statesmen
should take to heart. At this time, de Marsay had just been employing
his friend, our friend de Trailles, in the high comedy of politics.
Maxime had looked high for his conquests; he had no experience of
untitled women; and at fifty years he felt that he had a right to take a
bite of the so-called wild fruit, much as a sportsman will halt under
a peasant's apple-tree. So the Count found a reading-room for Mlle.
Chocardelle, a rather smart little place to be had cheap, as usual--"

"Pooh!" said Nathan. "She did not stay in it six months. She was too
handsome to keep a reading-room."

"Perhaps you are the father of her child?" suggested the lorette.

Desroches resumed.

"Since the firm bought up Maxime's debts, Cerizet's likeness to a
bailiff's officer grew more and more striking, and one morning after
seven fruitless attempts he succeeded in penetrating into the Count's
presence. Suzon, the old man-servant, albeit he was by no means in his
novitiate, at last mistook the visitor for a petitioner, come to propose
a thousand crowns if Maxime would obtain a license to sell postage
stamps for a young lady. Suzon, without the slightest suspicion of the
little scamp, a thoroughbred Paris street-boy into whom prudence had
been rubbed by repeated personal experience of the police-courts,
induced his master to receive h