brought out the names of David
Sechard and Eve, little Postel grew very red, and Leonie, his wife,
felt it incumbent upon her to give him a jealous glance--the glance
that a wife never fails to give when she is perfectly sure of her
husband, and gives a look into the past by way of a caution for the
future.

"What have yonder folk done to you, uncle, that you should mix
yourself up in their affairs?" inquired Leonie, with very perceptible
tartness.

"They are in trouble, my girl," said the cure, and he told the Postels
about Lucien at the Courtois' mill.

"Oh! so that is the way he came back from Paris, is it?" exclaimed
Postel. "Yet he had some brains, poor fellow, and he was ambitious,
too. He went out to look for wool, and comes home shorn. But what does
he want here? His sister is frightfully poor; for all these geniuses,
David and Lucien alike, know very little about business. There was
some talk of him at the Tribunal, and, as judge, I was obliged to sign
the warrant of execution. It was a painful duty. I do not know whether
the sister's circumstances are such that Lucien can go to her; but in
any case the little room that he used to occupy here is at liberty,
and I shall be pleased to offer it to him."

"That is right, Postel," said the priest; he bestowed a kiss on the
infant slumbering in Leonie's arms, and, adjusting his cocked hat,
prepared to walk out of the shop.

"You will dine with us, uncle, of course," said Mme. Postel; "if once
you meddle in these people's affairs, it will be some time before you
have done. My husband will drive you back again in his little
pony-cart."

Husband and wife stood watching their valued, aged relative on his way
into Angouleme. "He carries himself well for his age, all the same,"
remarked the druggist.

By this time David had been in hiding for eleven days in a house only
two doors away from the druggist's shop, which the worthy ecclesiastic
had just quitted to climb the steep path into Angouleme with the news
of Lucien's present condition.

When the Abbe Marron debouched upon the Place du Murier he found three
men, each one remarkable in his own way, and all of them bearing with
their whole weight upon the present and future of the hapless
voluntary prisoner. There stood old Sechard, the tall Cointet, and his
confederate, the puny limb of the law, three men representing three
phases of greed as widely different as the outward forms of the
speakers. The first had