charmed to have so
excellent a debtor return to him, and he hastened to advance to him all
that he could possibly want, even more.

A month passed peaceably by, during which time Samuel Brohl repaired two
or three times each week to Cormeilles. He made himself adored by the
entire household, including the gardener, the porter and his family,
and the Angora cat that had welcomed him at the time of his first visit.
This pretty, soft white puss had conceived for Samuel Brohl a most
deplorable sympathy; perhaps she had recognised that he possessed the
soul of a cat, together with all the feline graces. She lavished on him
the most flattering attentions; she loved to rub coaxingly against him,
to spring on his knee, to repose in his lap. In retaliation, the great,
tawny spaniel belonging to Mlle. Moriaz treated the newcomer with the
utmost severity and was continually looking askance at him; when Samuel
attempted a caress, he would growl ominously and show his teeth, which
called forth numerous stern corrections from his mistress. Dogs are born
gendarmes or police agents; they have marvellous powers of divination
and instinctive hatred of people whose social status is not orthodox,
whose credentials are irregular, or who have borrowed the credentials
of others. As to Mlle. Moiseney, who had not the scent of a spaniel,
she had gone distracted over this noble, this heroic, this incomparable
Count Larinski. In a _tete-a-tete_ he had contrived to have with her, he
had evinced much respect for her character, so much admiration for her
natural and acquired enlightenment, that she had been moved to tears;
for the first time she felt herself understood. What moved her, however,
still more was that he asked her as a favour never to quit Mlle. Moriaz
and to consider as her own the house he hoped one day to possess. "What
a man!" she ejaculated, with as much conviction as Mlle. Galet.

The principal study of Samuel Brohl was to insinuate himself into the
good graces of M. Moriaz, whose mental reservations he dreaded. He
succeeded in some measure, or at least he disarmed any lingering
suspicions by the irreproachable adjustment of his manners, by the
reserve of his language, by his great show of lack of curiosity
regarding all questions that might have a proximate or remote connection
with his interests. How, then, had Mme. de Lorcy come to take it into
her head that there was something of the appraiser about Samuel
Brohl, and that hi