he kind. Whether the calumny be true or false,
you have seen the effect of it this evening. This is a sample of the
pleasures in store for you. What can you expect, _mon cher_? You have
thrown away your crutches too soon, and thought to walk by yourselves.
That is all very well when one is well set up and firm on the legs; but
when one had not a very solid footing, and has also the misfortune
to feel Hemerlingue at his heels, it is a bad business. Besides, your
master is beginning to be short of money; he has given notes of hand to
old Schwalbach--and don't talk to me of a Nabob who gives notes of hand.
I know well that you have millions over yonder, but your election must
be declared valid before you can touch them; a few more articles like
to-day's, and I answer for it that you will not secure that declaration.
You set yourselves up to struggle against Paris, _mon bon_, but you are
not big enough for such a match; you know nothing about it. Here we
are not in the East, and if we do not wring the necks of people who
displease us, if we do not throw them into the water in a sack, we have
other methods of effecting their disappearance. Noel, let your master
take care. One of these mornings Paris will swallow him as I swallow
this plum, without spitting out either the stone or skin."

He was terrible, this old man, and notwithstanding the paint on his
face, I felt a certain respect for him. While he was speaking, we could
hear the music upstairs, and the horses of the municipal guards shaking
their curb-chains in the square. From without, our festivities must have
seemed very brilliant, all lighted up by their thousands of candles,
and with the great portico illuminated. And when one reflected that ruin
perhaps lay beneath it all! We sat there in the vestibule like rats that
hold counsel with each other at the bottom of a ship's hold, when the
vessel is beginning to leak and before the crew has found it out, and I
saw clearly that all the lackeys and chambermaids would not be long in
decamping at the first note of alarm. Could such a catastrophe indeed be
possible? And in that case what would become of me, and the Territorial,
and the money I had advanced, and the arrears due to me?

That Francis has left me with a cold shudder down my back.

A PUBLIC MAN

The bright warmth of a clear May afternoon heated the lofty casement
windows of the Mora mansion to the temperature of a greenhouse. The
blue silk curtains wer