e was too much the man of his letters which we have read, his
heart was too noble and pure to allow him to hesitate at the call of
honor. He at once resolved to find Modeste's father, if he were in
Paris, and confess all to him, and to let Canalis know the serious
results of their Parisian jest. To a sensitive nature like his,
Modeste's large fortune was in itself a determining reason. He could not
allow it to be even suspected that the ardor of the correspondence, so
sincere on his part, had in view the capture of a "dot." Tears were in
his eyes as he made his way to the rue Chantereine to find the banker
Mongenod, whose fortune and business connections were partly the work of
the minister to whom Ernest owed his start in life.

At the hour when La Briere was inquiring about the father of his beloved
from the head of the house of Mongenod, and getting information that
might be useful to him in his strange position, a scene was taking place
in Canalis's study which the ex-lieutenant's hasty departure from Havre
may have led the reader to foresee.

Like a true soldier of the imperial school, Dumay, whose Breton blood
had boiled all the way to Paris, considered a poet to be a poor stick of
a fellow, of no consequence whatever,--a buffoon addicted to choruses,
living in a garret, dressed in black clothes that were white at every
seam, wearing boots that were occasionally without soles, and linen that
was unmentionable, and whose fingers knew more about ink than soap; in
short, one who looked always as if he had tumbled from the moon,
except when scribbling at a desk, like Butscha. But the seething of the
Breton's heart and brain received a violent application of cold water
when he entered the courtyard of the pretty house occupied by the poet
and saw a groom washing a carriage, and also, through the windows of a
handsome dining-room, a valet dressed like a banker, to whom the groom
referred him, and who answered, looking the stranger over from head to
foot, that Monsieur le baron was not visible. "There is," added the man,
"a meeting of the council of state to-day, at which Monsieur le baron is
obliged to be present."

"Is this really the house of Monsieur Canalis," said Dumay, "a writer of
poetry?"

"Monsieur le baron de Canalis," replied the valet, "is the great poet
of whom you speak; but he is also the president of the court of Claims
attached to the ministry of foreign affairs."

Dumay, who had come to box the ea