e,"--one would have said he was
answering his young companion's secret thought,--"stick loyally to my
ship. The spars are stanch and the hold is full of coal. I swear to you
that we will sail far and fast, damme!"

The artless Southerner thus discharged his plans into the darkness with
an abundance of expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they
paced the vast, deserted square, majestically surrounded by its
tightly-closed silent palaces, he looked up toward the bronze man on
the column, as if calling to witness that great upstart, whose presence
in the heart of Paris justifies the most extravagant ambitions and
renders all chimeras probable.

There is in youth a warmth of heart, a craving for enthusiasm which are
aroused by the slightest breath. As the Nabob spoke, de Gery felt his
suspicions vanishing and all his sympathy reviving with an infusion of
pity. No, surely that man was no vile knave, but a poor deluded mortal
whose fortune had gone to his head, like a wine too powerful for a
stomach that has long slaked its thirst with water. Alone in the midst
of Paris, surrounded by enemies and sharpers, Jansoulet reminded him of
a pedestrian laden with gold passing through a wood haunted by thieves,
in the dark and unarmed. And he thought that it would be well for the
protege to watch over the patron without seeming to do so, to be the
clear-sighted Telemachus of that blind Mentor, to point out the
pitfalls to him, to defend him against the brigands, in short to assist
him to fight in that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt to be
lurking savagely about the Nabob and his millions.

V.

THE JOYEUSE FAMILY.

Every morning in the year, at precisely eight o'clock, a new and almost
uninhabited house in an out-of-the-way quarter of Paris was filled with
shouts and cries and happy laughter that rang clear as crystal in the
desert of the hall.

"Father, don't forget my music."

"Father, my embroidery cotton."

"Father, bring us some rolls."

And the father's voice calling from below:

"Yaia, throw down my bag."

"Well, upon my word! he's forgotten his bag."

Thereupon there was joyous haste from top to bottom of the house, a
running to and fro of all those pretty faces, heavy-eyed with sleep, of
all those touzled locks which they put in order as they ran, up to the
very moment when a half-dozen of young girls, leaning over the rail,
bade an echoing farewell to a little old gentleman neatly