race
which did not exclude an expression of aristocratic disdain. They had
the bright coloring, the clear eye, the transparent flesh which reveal
habits of purity, regularity of life, and a due proportion of work and
play. They both had black hair and blue eyes, and a twist in their nose,
like their father; but their mother, perhaps, had transmitted to them
the dignity of speech, of look and mien, which are hereditary in the
Blamont-Chauvrys. Their voices, as clear as crystal, had an emotional
quality, the softness which proves so seductive; they had, in short, the
voice a woman would willingly listen to after feeling the flame of their
looks. But, above all, they had the modesty of pride, a chaste reserve,
a _touch-me-not_ which at a maturer age might have seemed intentional
coyness, so much did their demeanor inspire a wish to know them. The
elder, Comte Clement de Negrepelisse, was close upon his sixteenth year.
For the last two years he had ceased to wear the pretty English round
jacket which his brother, Vicomte Camille d'Espard, still wore. The
Count, who for the last six months went no more to the College Henri
IV., was dressed in the style of a young man enjoying the first
pleasures of fashion. His father had not wished to condemn him to a
year's useless study of philosophy; he was trying to give his knowledge
some consistency by the study of transcendental mathematics. At the
same time, the Marquis was having him taught Eastern languages, the
international law of Europe, heraldry, and history from the original
sources, charters, early documents, and collections of edicts. Camille
had lately begun to study rhetoric.

The day when Popinot arranged to go to question M. d'Espard was a
Thursday, a holiday. At about nine in the morning, before their father
was awake, the brothers were playing in the garden. Clement was
finding it hard to refuse his brother, who was anxious to go to the
shooting-gallery for the first time, and who begged him to second his
request to the Marquis. The Viscount always rather took advantage of his
weakness, and was very fond of wrestling with his brother. So the couple
were quarreling and fighting in play like schoolboys. As they ran in
the garden, chasing each other, they made so much noise as to wake their
father, who came to the window without their perceiving him in the heat
of the fray. The Marquis amused himself with watching his two children
twisted together like snakes, their face