uke.

"The Duke de Montauban is not ill-looking," Maurice remarked, to decoy
her into some more open expression; "and he is sufficiently
agreeable,--do you not think so?"

"I never thought about him," she replied, somewhat petulantly. "If I
chance to look at him I never think of any one but his tailor and his
hairdresser, without whom I verily believe he would have no tangible
existence."

"An accomplished tailor and a skilful _coiffure_ are all very well in
their way," observed her uncle; "but a scientific _cook_ is the grand
necessity of a man's life,--a daily need,--the trebly repeated need of
each day; and the education of a cook should commence in the cradle. If
this point received the attention which it deserves from sanitarians,
there would be fewer digestive organs out of order, and consequently
fewer police reports, and a vast diminution of eccentric degradation,
and moping madness and suicide, and horrors in general."

Bertha and Maurice did not dispute this sweeping assertion; for they
knew it would entail upon them the necessity of encountering a battalion
of arguments, which the marquis delighted to call into action to defend
the ground upon which he took up his favorite position.

Count Tristan's reply to Maurice, enclosing a check for the thousand
francs, was received a few days later. Maurice returned to the Jew with
the money. The latter rejoiced him by vaguely hinting that there was a
prospect of successful operation; but the matter would occupy time. The
viscount would be good enough to call again in a week.

Maurice was too unsuspicious and too unskilled in transactions of this
nature to doubt that the Jew was dealing with him in good faith. Instead
of a week, he returned the next morning, and repeated his visits
regularly every day. The Jew diligently fanned his hopes, assuring him
that old Henriques was not to be baffled, though the parties through
whose hands the jewels had passed were almost unapproachable. Very soon
the merciless Israelite notified the young nobleman that further funds
would be requisite, and Maurice writhed under the cruel compulsion which
forced him to make a second application to his father.

Bertha had been a fortnight in Paris when the anniversary of her
birthday, which for the first time had been forgotten, was in a singular
manner recalled to her mind. A small package had been received for her
at her uncle's residence in Bordeaux, and had been promptly forwarded to