t the cares and annoyances which she
would certainly saddle upon herself. 'Oh! nonsense!' she said; 'they'll
stir my blood and do my health good!'"

"It is pitiable!" said Cerizet. "That poor old maid will never know
which end to take hold of; she doesn't imagine what it is to have
an empty house, and which must be filled with tenants from garret to
cellar."

"I plied her with all those arguments," replied la Peyrade; "but I
couldn't move her resolution. Don't you see, my dear democrats, you
stirred up the revolution of '89; you thought to make a fine speculation
in dethroning the noble by the bourgeois, and the end of it is you are
shoved out yourselves. This looks like paradox; but you've found out now
that the peasant and clodhopper isn't malleable; he can't be forced
down and kept under like the noble. The aristocracy, on behalf of
its dignity, would not condescend to common cares, and was therefore
dependent on a crowd of plebeian servitors to whom it had to trust for
three-fourths of the actions of its own life. That was the reign of
stewards and bailiffs, wily fellows, into whose hands the interests of
the great families passed, and who fed and grew fat on the parings of
the great fortunes they managed. But now-a-days, utilitarian theories,
as they call them, have come to the fore,--'We are never so well served
as by ourselves,' 'There's no shame in attending to one's own business,'
and many other bourgeois maxims which have suppressed the role of
intermediaries. Why shouldn't Mademoiselle Brigitte Thuillier manage her
own house when dukes and peers go in person to the Bourse, where such
men sign their own leases and read the deeds before they sign them, and
go themselves to the notary, whom, in former days, they considered a
servant."

During this time Cerizet had time to recover from the blow he had just
received squarely in the face, and to think of the transition he had
to make from one set of interests to the other, of which he was now the
agent.

"What you are declaiming there is all very clever," he said, carelessly,
"but the thing that proves to me our defeat is the fact that you are not
on the terms with Mademoiselle Thuillier you would have us believe
you are. She is slipping through your fingers; and I don't think that
marriage is anything like as certain as Dutocq and I have been fancying
it was."

"Well, no doubt," said la Peyrade, "there are still some touches to be
given to our sketch, but I