o is to get the payment of
your debts postponed for ninety days. Why didn't you tell us about them?
The money-lenders at Baden would have spared you--served you perhaps;
but now, after you have once been in prison, they'll despise you. A
money-lender is, like society, like the masses, down on his knees before
the man who is strong enough to trick him, and pitiless to the lambs.
To the eyes of some persons Sainte-Pelagie is a she-devil who burns the
souls of young men. Do you want my candid advice? I shall tell you as I
told that little d'Esgrignon: 'Arrange to pay your debts leisurely; keep
enough to live on for three years, and marry some girl in the provinces
who can bring you an income of thirty thousand francs.' In the course of
three years you can surely find some virtuous heiress who is willing to
call herself Madame la Vicomtesse de Portenduere. Such is virtue,--let's
drink to it. I give you a toast: 'The girl with money!"

The young men did not leave their ex-friend till the official hour for
parting. The gate was no sooner closed behind them than they said to
each other: "He's not strong enough!" "He's quite crushed." "I don't
believe he'll pull through it?"

The next day Savinien wrote his mother a confession in twenty-two pages.
Madame de Portenduere, after weeping for one whole day, wrote first to
her son, promising to get him out of prison, and then to the Comte de
Portenduere and to Admiral Kergarouet.

The letters the abbe had just read and which the poor mother was holding
in her hand and moistening with tears, were the answers to her appeal,
which had arrived that morning, and had almost broken her heart.

Paris, September, 1829.

To Madame de Portenduere:

Madame,--You cannot doubt the interest which the admiral and I both feel
in your troubles. What you ask of Monsieur de Kergarouet grieves me all
the more because our house was a home to your son; we were proud of him.
If Savinien had had more confidence in the admiral we could have taken
him to live with us, and he would already have obtained some good
situation. But, unfortunately, he told us nothing; he ran into debt of
his own accord, and even involved himself for me, who knew nothing
of his pecuniary position. It is all the more to be regretted because
Savinien has, for the moment, tied our hands by allowing the authorities
to arrest him.

If my nephew had not shown a foolish passion for me and sacrificed our
relationship to the vanity