"I must ask you to leave me, Albert," he said kindly. "I must be alone
to reflect, to try and accustom myself to this terrible blow."

And, as the young man closed the door, he added, as if giving vent to
his inmost thoughts, "If he, in whom I have placed all my hope, deserts
me, what will become of me? And what will the other one be like?"

Albert's features, when he left the count's study, bore traces of the
violent emotions he had felt during the interview. The servants whom he
met noticed it the more, as they had heard something of the quarrel.

"Well," said an old footman who had been in the family thirty years,
"the count has had another unhappy scene with his son. The old fellow
has been in a dreadful passion."

"I got wind of it at dinner," spoke up a valet de chambre: "the count
restrained himself enough not to burst out before me; but he rolled his
eyes fiercely."

"What can be the matter?"

"Pshaw! that's more than they know themselves. Why, Denis, before
whom they always speak freely, says that they often wrangle for hours
together, like dogs, about things which he can never see through."

"Ah," cried out a young fellow, who was being trained to service, "if
I were in the viscount's place, I'd settle the old gent pretty
effectually!"

"Joseph, my friend," said the footman pointedly, "you are a fool. You
might give your father his walking ticket very properly, because you
never expect five sous from him; and you have already learned how to
earn your living without doing any work at all. But the viscount, pray
tell me what he is good for, what he knows how to do? Put him in the
centre of Paris, with only his fine hands for capital, and you will
see."

"Yes, but he has his mother's property in Normandy," replied Joseph.

"I can't for the life of me," said the valet de chambre, "see what
the count finds to complain of; for his son is a perfect model, and
I shouldn't be sorry to have one like him. There was a very different
pair, when I was in the Marquis de Courtivois's service. He was one
who made it a point never to be in good humor. His eldest son, who is
a friend of the viscount's, and who comes here occasionally, is a pit
without a bottom, as far as money is concerned. He will fritter away a
thousand-franc note quicker than Joseph can smoke a pipe."

"But the marquis is not rich," said a little old man, who himself had
perhaps the enormous wages of fifteen francs; "he can't have more than
s