de Chaulieu, a former
creditor, walking along, umbrella in hand, while he himself sat perched
in a low chaise on which his coat-of-arms was resplendent, with the
motto, _Deo sic patet fides et hominibus_. This contrast filled his
heart with a large draught of the balm on which the middle class has
been getting drunk ever since 1840.

Madame de la Baudraye was shocked to see her husband improved and
looking better than on the day of his marriage. The little dwarf, full
of rapturous delight, at sixty-four triumphed in the life which had so
long been denied him; in the family, which his handsome cousin Milaud of
Nevers had declared he would never have; and in his wife--who had asked
Monsieur and Madame de Clagny to dinner to meet the cure of the parish
and his two sponsors to the Chamber of Peers. He petted the children
with fatuous delight.

The handsome display on the table met with his approval.

"These are the fleeces of the Berry sheep," said he, showing Monsieur de
Nucingen the dish-covers surmounted by his newly-won coronet. "They are
of silver, you see!"

Though consumed by melancholy, which she concealed with the
determination of a really superior woman, Dinah was charming, witty, and
above all, young again in her court mourning.

"You might declare," cried La Baudraye to Monsieur de Nucingen with a
wave of his hand to his wife, "that the Countess was not yet thirty."

"Ah, ha! Matame is a voman of dirty!" replied the baron, who was
prone to time-honored remarks, which he took to be the small change of
conversation.

"In every sense of the words," replied the Countess. "I am, in fact,
five-and-thirty, and mean to set up a little passion--"

"Oh, yes, my wife ruins me in curiosities and china images--"

"She started that mania at an early age," said the Marquis de Montriveau
with a smile.

"Yes," said La Baudraye, with a cold stare at the Marquis, whom he had
known at Bourges, "you know that in '25, '26, and '27, she picked a
million francs' worth of treasures. Anzy is a perfect museum."

"What a cool hand!" thought Monsieur de Clagny, as he saw this little
country miser quite on the level of his new position.

But misers have savings of all kinds ready for use.

On the day after the vote on the Regency had passed the Chambers, the
little Count went back to Sancerre for the vintage and resumed his old
habits.

In the course of that winter, the Comtesse de la Baudraye, with the
support of the Attor