son-in-law and the father-in-law, the former disdainful, intrenching
himself behind his science, and the latter shouting that the commonest
labourer knew more than an architect did. The millions were in
danger, and one fine day Margaillan turned Dubuche out of his offices,
forbidding him ever to set foot in them again, since he did not even
know how to direct a building-yard where only four men worked. It was a
disaster, a lamentable failure, the School of Arts collapsing, derided
by a mason!

At this point of Sandoz's story, Claude, who had begun to listen to his
friend, inquired:

'Then what is Dubuche doing now?'

'I don't know--nothing probably,' answered Sandoz. 'He told me that he
was anxious about his children's health, and was taking care of them.'

That pale woman, Madame Margaillan, as slender as the blade of a knife,
had died of tubercular consumption, which was plainly the hereditary
disease, the source of the family's degeneracy, for her daughter,
Regine, had been coughing ever since her marriage. She was now drinking
the waters at Mont-Dore, whither she had not dared to take her children,
as they had been very poorly the year before, after a season spent
in that part, where the air was too keen for them. This explained the
scattering of the family: the mother over yonder with her maid;
the grandfather in Paris, where he had resumed his great building
enterprises, battling amid his four hundred workmen, and crushing the
idle and the incapable beneath his contempt; and the father in exile at
La Richaudiere, set to watch over his son and daughter, shut up there,
after the very first struggle, as if it had broken him down for life. In
a moment of effusion Dubuche had even let Sandoz understand that as his
wife was so extremely delicate he now lived with her merely on friendly
terms.

'A nice marriage,' said Sandoz, simply, by way of conclusion.

It was ten o'clock when the two friends rang at the iron gate of La
Richaudiere. The estate, with which they were not acquainted, amazed
them. There was a superb park, a garden laid out in the French style,
with balustrades and steps spreading away in regal fashion; three huge
conservatories and a colossal cascade--quite a piece of folly, with its
rocks brought from afar, and the quantity of cement and the number of
conduits that had been employed in arranging it. Indeed, the owner had
sunk a fortune in it, out of sheer vanity. But what struck the friends
still