versation was still going on,
he thought of pardoning his steward after giving him a good reproof.
Strange to say, the dishonesty of his confidential agent occupied
his mind as a mere episode from the moment when Oscar revealed his
infirmities. Secrets so carefully guarded could only have been revealed
by Moreau, who had, no doubt, laughed over the hidden troubles of
his benefactor with either Madame de Serizy's former maid or with the
Aspasia of the Directory.

As he walked along the wood-path, this peer of France, this statesman,
wept as young men weep; he wept his last tears. All human feelings
were so cruelly hurt by one stroke that the usually calm man staggered
through his park like a wounded deer.

When Moreau arrived at the gamekeeper's lodge and asked for his horse,
the keeper's wife replied:--

"Monsieur le comte has just taken it."

"Monsieur le comte!" cried Moreau. "Whom do you mean?"

"Why, the Comte de Serizy, our master," she replied. "He is probably at
the chateau by this time," she added, anxious to be rid of the steward,
who, unable to understand the meaning of her words, turned back towards
the chateau.

But he presently turned again and came back to the lodge, intending to
question the woman more closely; for he began to see something serious
in this secret arrival, and the apparently strange method of his
master's return. But the wife of the gamekeeper, alarmed to find herself
caught in a vise between the count and his steward, had locked herself
into the house, resolved not to open to any but her husband. Moreau,
more and more uneasy, ran rapidly, in spite of his boots and spurs, to
the chateau, where he was told that the count was dressing.

"Seven persons invited to dinner!" cried Rosalie as soon as she saw him.

Moreau then went through the offices to his own house. On his way he met
the poultry-girl, who was having an altercation with a handsome young
man.

"Monsieur le comte particularly told me a colonel, an aide-de-camp of
Mina," insisted the girl.

"I am not a colonel," replied Georges.

"But isn't your name Georges?"

"What's all this?" said the steward, intervening.

"Monsieur, my name is Georges Marest; I am the son of a rich wholesale
ironmonger in the rue Saint-Martin; I come on business to Monsieur le
Comte de Serizy from Maitre Crottat, a notary, whose second clerk I am."

"And I," said the girl, "am telling him that monseigneur said to me:
'There'll come a colonel