nd what was more, he had been putting
by money for the past fifteen years to enable his lout of a son to buy
back from Emile that portion of his father's estate which could not
legally be taken away from him.

Emile Blondet thus turned adrift had contrived to gain distinction in
Paris, but so far it was rather a name than a practical result.
Emile's indolence, recklessness, and happy-go-lucky ways drove his
real father to despair; and when that father died, a half-ruined man,
turned out of office by one of the political reactions so frequent
under the Restoration, it was with a mind uneasy as to the future of a
man endowed with the most brilliant qualities.

Emile Blondet found support in a friendship with a Mlle. de
Troisville, whom he had known before her marriage with the Comte de
Montcornet. His mother was living when the Troisvilles came back after
the emigration; she was related to the family, distantly it is true,
but the connection was close enough to allow her to introduce Emile to
the house. She, poor woman, foresaw the future. She knew that when she
died her son would lose both mother and father, a thought which made
death doubly bitter, so she tried to interest others in him. She
encouraged the liking that sprang up between Emile and the eldest
daughter of the house of Troisville; but while the liking was
exceedingly strong on the young lady's part, a marriage was out of the
question. It was a romance on the pattern of Paul et Virginie. Mme.
Blondet did what she could to teach her son to look to the
Troisvilles, to found a lasting attachment on a children's game of
"make-believe" love, which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances
usually do. When Mlle. de Troisville's marriage with General
Montcornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a dying woman, went to the
bride and solemnly implored her never to abandon Emile, and to use her
influence for him in society in Paris, whither the General's fortune
summoned her to shine.

Luckily for Emile, he was able to make his own way. He made his
appearance, at the age of twenty, as one of the masters of modern
literature; and met with no less success in the society into which he
was launched by the father who at first could afford to bear the
expense of the young man's extravagance. Perhaps Emile's precocious
celebrity and the good figure that he made strengthened the bonds of
his friendship with the Countess. Perhaps Mme. de Montcornet, with the
Russian blood in her