, returning to M. de
Bargeton.

"Very seldom."

Silence again. M. de Bargeton watched Lucien's slightest movements
like a suspicious cat; the young man's presence disturbed him. Each was
afraid of the other.

"Can he feel suspicious of my attentions?" thought Lucien; "he seems to
be anything but friendly."

Lucien was not a little embarrassed by the uneasy glances that the
other gave him as he went to and fro, when luckily for him, the
old man-servant (who wore livery for the occasion) announced "M. du
Chatelet." The Baron came in, very much at ease, greeted his friend
Bargeton, and favored Lucien with the little nod then in vogue, which
the poet in his mind called purse-proud impertinence.

Sixte du Chatelet appeared in a pair of dazzling white trousers with
invisible straps that kept them in shape. He wore pumps and thread
stockings; the black ribbon of his eyeglass meandered over a white
waistcoat, and the fashion and elegance of Paris was strikingly apparent
in his black coat. He was indeed just the faded beau who might be
expected from his antecedents, though advancing years had already
endowed him with a certain waist-girth which somewhat exceeded the
limits of elegance. He had dyed the hair and whiskers grizzled by his
sufferings during his travels, and this gave a hard look to his
face. The skin which had once been so delicate had been tanned to the
copper-red color of Europeans from India; but in spite of his absurd
pretensions to youth, you could still discern traces of the Imperial
Highness' charming private secretary in du Chatelet's general
appearance. He put up his eyeglass and stared at his rival's nankeen
trousers, at his boots, at his waistcoat, at the blue coat made by the
Angouleme tailor, he looked him over from head to foot, in short, then
he coolly returned his eyeglass to his waistcoat pocket with a gesture
that said, "I am satisfied." And Lucien, eclipsed at this moment by the
elegance of the inland revenue department, thought that it would be his
turn by and by, when he should turn a face lighted up with poetry upon
the assembly; but this prospect did not prevent him from feeling the
sharp pang that succeeded to the uncomfortable sense of M. de Bargeton's
imagined hostility. The Baron seemed to bring all the weight of his
fortune to bear upon him, the better to humiliate him in his poverty.
M. de Bargeton had counted on having no more to say, and his soul was
dismayed by the pause spent b