ficant!--Twenty years hence my name will be more difficult to
identify than that of the Public Prosecutor whose axiom, written in your
album, will designate him as an obscurer Montesquieu. And I should
want at least twenty-four hours to improvise some sufficiently bitter
reflections, for I could only describe what I feel."

"I wish you needed a fortnight," said Madame de la Baudraye graciously,
as she handed him the book. "I should keep you here all the longer."

At five next morning all the party in the Chateau d'Anzy were astir,
little La Baudraye having arranged a day's sport for the Parisians--less
for their pleasure than to gratify his own conceit. He was delighted to
make them walk over the twelve hundred acres of waste land that he
was intending to reclaim, an undertaking that would cost some hundred
thousand francs, but which might yield an increase of thirty to sixty
thousand francs a year in the returns of the estate of Anzy.

"Do you know why the Public Prosecutor has not come out with us?" asked
Gatien Boirouge of Monsieur Gravier.

"Why he told us that he was obliged to sit to-day; the minor cases are
before the Court," replied the other.

"And did you believe that?" cried Gatien. "Well, my papa said to me,
'Monsieur Lebas will not join you early, for Monsieur de Clagny has
begged him as his deputy to sit for him!'

"Indeed!" said Gravier, changing countenance. "And Monsieur de la
Baudraye is gone to La Charite!"

"But why do you meddle in such matters?" said Bianchon to Gatien.

"Horace is right," said Lousteau. "I cannot imagine why you trouble your
heads so much about each other; you waste your time in frivolities."

Horace Bianchon looked at Etienne Lousteau, as much as to say
that newspaper epigrams and the satire of the "funny column" were
incomprehensible at Sancerre.

On reaching a copse, Monsieur Gravier left the two great men and Gatien,
under the guidance of a keeper, to make their way through a little
ravine.

"Well, we must wait for Monsieur Gravier," said Bianchon, when they had
reached a clearing.

"You may be a great physician," said Gatien, "but you are ignorant of
provincial life. You mean to wait for Monsieur Gravier?--By this time
he is running like a hare, in spite of his little round stomach; he is
within twenty minutes of Anzy by now----" Gatien looked at his watch.
"Good! he will be just in time."

"Where?"

"At the chateau for breakfast," replied Gatien. "Do you