y, but more especially to
Charvet. He introduced them to one another as professors, and very able
men, who would be sure to get on well together. But it was probable that
he had already been guilty of some indiscretion, for all the men at once
shook hands with a tight and somewhat masonic squeeze of each other's
fingers. Charvet, for his part, showed himself almost amiable; and
whether he and the others knew anything of Florent's antecedents, they
at all events indulged in no embarrassing allusions.

"Did Manoury pay you in small change?" Logre asked Clemence.

She answered affirmatively, and produced a roll of francs and another of
two-franc pieces, and unwrapped them. Charvet watched her, and his eyes
followed the rolls as she replaced them in her pocket, after counting
their contents and satisfying herself that they were correct.

"We have our accounts to settle," he said in a low voice.

"Yes, we'll settle up to-night," the young woman replied. "But we
are about even, I should think. I've breakfasted with you four times,
haven't I? But I lent you a hundred sous last week, you know."

Florent, surprised at hearing this, discreetly turned his head away.
Then Clemence slipped the last roll of silver into her pocket, drank a
little of her grog, and, leaning against the glazed partition, quietly
settled herself down to listen to the men talking politics. Gavard had
taken up the newspaper again, and, in tones which he strove to render
comic, was reading out some passages of the speech from the throne which
had been delivered that morning at the opening of the Chambers. Charvet
made fine sport of the official phraseology; there was not a single line
of it which he did not tear to pieces. One sentence afforded especial
amusement to them all. It was this: "We are confident, gentlemen,
that, leaning on your lights[*] and the conservative sentiments of the
country, we shall succeed in increasing the national prosperity day by
day."

[*] In the sense of illumination of mind. It has been
necessary to give a literal translation of this phrase to
enable the reader to realise the point of subsequent
witticisms in which Clemence and Gavard indulge.
--Translator.

Logre rose up and repeated this sentence, and by speaking through his
nose succeeded fairly well in mimicking the Emperor's drawling voice.

"It's lovely, that prosperity of his; why, everyone's dying of hunger!"
said Charvet.

"Trade is