granting me this favor you could not really know the
full extent of your charity. Without you, madame, and the consolation
of writing to you sometimes, what would become of me under the habitual
weight of my sad thoughts in a town which has neither society, nor
commerce, nor curiosities, nor environs; and where all intellectual
activity spends itself on the making of pickled pork, soap-grease,
stockings, and cotton night-caps. Dorlange, whom I shall not long call
by that name (you shall presently know why) is so absorbed in steering
his electoral frigate that I scarcely see him.

I told you, madame, that I resolved to come down here and join our
mutual friend in consequence of a certain trouble of mind apparent in
one of his letters, which informed me of a great revolution taking place
in his life. I am able to-day to be more explicit. Dorlange at last
knows his father. He is the natural son of the Marquis de Sallenauve,
the last living scion of one of the best families in Champagne. Without
explaining the reasons which have hitherto induced him to keep his son's
birth secret, the marquis has now recognized him legally. He has
also bought and presented to him an estate formerly belonging to the
Sallenauve family. This estate is situated in Arcis itself, and its
possession will assist the project of our friend's election. That
project dates much farther back than we thought; and it did not take its
rise in the fancy of Dorlange.

A year ago, the marquis began to prepare for it by sending his son a sum
of money for the purchase of real estate in conformity with electoral
laws; and it is also for the furtherance of this purpose that he has now
made him doubly a landowner. The real object of all these sacrifices not
seeming plain to Charles de Sallenauve, doubts have arisen in his mind,
and it was to assist in dispelling them that my friendship for the poor
fellow brought me here.

The marquis appears to be as odd and whimsical as he is opulent; for,
instead of remaining in Arcis, where his presence and his name would
contribute to the success of the election he desires, the very day after
legal formalities attending the recognition of his son had been complied
with, he departed furtively for foreign countries, where he says he has
important interests, without so much as taking leave of his son. This
coldness has poisoned the happiness Charles would otherwise feel in
these events; but one must take fathers as they are, f