ed cotton shirt, expressed, in the midst of all this ruin,
such a latent desire to SHOW-OFF that the contrast was not only a sight
to see, but a lesson to be learned.

"And that is Georges!" said Oscar, in his own mind,--"a man I left in
possession of thirty thousand francs a year!"

"Has Monsieur _de_ Pierrotin a place in the coupe?" asked Georges,
ironically replying to Pierrotin's rebuff.

"No; my coupe is taken by a peer of France, the son-in-law of Monsieur
Moreau, Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, his wife, and his mother-in-law. I
have nothing left but one place in the interieur."

"The devil! so peers of France still travel in your coach, do they?"
said Georges, remembering his adventure with the Comte de Serizy. "Well,
I'll take that place in the interieur."

He cast a glance of examination on Oscar and his mother, but did not
recognize them.

Oscar's skin was now bronzed by the sun of Africa; his moustache was
very thick and his whiskers ample; the hollows in his cheeks and his
strongly marked features were in keeping with his military bearing.
The rosette of an officer of the Legion of honor, his missing arm,
the strict propriety of his dress, would all have diverted Georges
recollections of his former victim if he had had any. As for Madame
Clapart, whom Georges had scarcely seen, ten years devoted to the
exercise of the most severe piety had transformed her. No one would ever
have imagined that that gray sister concealed the Aspasia of 1797.

An enormous old man, very simply dressed, though his clothes were good
and substantial, in whom Oscar recognized Pere Leger, here came slowly
and heavily along. He nodded familiarly to Pierrotin, who appeared by
his manner to pay him the respect due in all lands to millionaires.

"Ha! ha! why, here's Pere Leger! more and more preponderant!" cried
Georges.

"To whom have I the honor of speaking?" asked old Leger, curtly.

"What! you don't recognize Colonel Georges, the friend of Ali pacha?
We travelled together once upon a time, in company with the Comte de
Serizy."

One of the habitual follies of those who have fallen in the world is to
recognize and desire the recognition of others.

"You are much changed," said the ex-farmer, now twice a millionaire.

"All things change," said Georges. "Look at the Lion d'Argent and
Pierrotin's coach; they are not a bit like what they were fourteen years
ago."

"Pierrotin now controls the whole service of the Valley of t