alone in her home with a single child.

There are some kinds of poverty which may be nobly accepted and gaily
borne; but Vinet, devoured by ambition, and feeling himself guilty
towards his wife, was full of darkling rage; his conscience grew
elastic; and he finally came to think any means of success permissible.
His young face changed. Persons about the courts were sometimes
frightened as they looked at his viperish, flat head, his slit mouth,
his eyes gleaming through glasses, and heard his sharp, persistent voice
which rasped their nerves. His muddy skin, with its sickly tones of
green and yellow, expressed the jaundice of his balked ambition, his
perpetual disappointments and his hidden wretchedness. He could talk and
argue; he was well-informed and shrewd, and was not without smartness
and metaphor. Accustomed to look at everything from the standpoint of
his own success, he was well fitted for a politician. A man who shrinks
from nothing so long as it is legal, is strong; and Vinet's strength lay
there.

This future athlete of parliamentary debate, who was destined to share
in proclaiming the dynasty of the house of Orleans had a terrible
influence on Pierrette's fate. At the present moment he was bent on
making for himself a weapon by founding a newspaper at Provins. After
studying the Rogrons at a distance (the colonel aiding him) he had come
to the conclusion that the brother might be made useful. This time he
was not mistaken; his days of poverty were over, after seven wretched
years, when even his daily bread was sometimes lacking. The day when
Gouraud told him in the little square that the Rogrons had finally
quarrelled with the bourgeois aristocracy of the Upper town, he nudged
the colonel in the ribs significantly, and said, with a knowing look:--

"One woman or another--handsome or ugly--_you_ don't care; marry
Mademoiselle Rogron and we can organize something at once."

"I have been thinking of it," replied Gouraud, "but the fact is they
have sent for the daughter of Colonel Lorrain, and she's their next of
kin."

"You can get them to make a will in your favor. Ha! you would get a very
comfortable house."

"As for the little girl--well, well, let's see her," said the colonel,
with a leering and thoroughly wicked look, which proved to a man of
Vinet's quality how little respect the old trooper could feel for any
girl.

IV. PIERRETTE

After her grandfather and grandmother entered the sort