like ill-cast cannon, were unable to withstand
such practice. The two societies naturally became exclusive.

Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from
aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His self-love
must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he received when
he felt himself insensibly set aside by people with whom he had rubbed
shoulders up to the time of this social change. He had now reached his
fortieth year, the last epoch at which a man who intends to marry can
think of a young wife. The matches to which he was able to aspire were
all among the bourgeoisie, but ambition prompted him to enter the upper
circle by means of some creditable alliance.

The isolation in which the Claes family were now living had hitherto
kept them aloof from these social changes. Though Claes belonged to the
old aristocracy of the province, his preoccupation of mind prevented him
from sharing the class antipathies thus created. However poor a daughter
of the Claes might be, she would bring to a husband the dower of social
vanity so eagerly desired by all parvenus. Pierquin therefore returned
to his allegiance, with the secret intention of making the necessary
sacrifices to conclude a marriage which should realize all his
ambitions. He kept company with Balthazar and Felicie during
Marguerite's absence; but in so doing he discovered, rather late in the
day, a formidable competitor in Emmanuel de Solis. The property of the
deceased abbe was thought to be considerable, and to the eyes of a man
who calculated all the affairs of life in figures, the young heir seemed
more powerful through his money than through the seductions of the
heart--as to which Pierquin never made himself uneasy. In his mind the
abbe's fortune restored the de Solis name to all its pristine value.
Gold and nobility of birth were two orbs which reflected lustre on one
another and doubled the illumination.

The sincere affection which the young professor testified for Felicie,
whom he treated as a sister, excited Pierquin's spirit of emulation. He
tried to eclipse Emmanuel by mingling a fashionable jargon and sundry
expressions of superficial gallantry with anxious elegies and business
airs which sat more naturally on his countenance. When he declared
himself disenchanted with the world he looked at Felicie, as if to let
her know that she alone could reconcile him with life. Felicie, who
received for the first ti