er does he
spend twenty francs between Paris and Moisselles; or expose himself to
be arrested as a deserter--"

"Monseigneur," said Georges Marest, "I may have amused myself with the
bourgeois in the diligence, but--"

"Let his Excellency finish what he was saying," said the notary, digging
his elbow into his clerk's ribs.

"A notary," continued the count, "ought to practise discretion,
shrewdness, caution from the start; he should be incapable of such a
blunder as taking a peer of France for a tallow-chandler--"

"I am willing to be blamed for my faults," said Georges; "but I never
left my deeds at the mercy of--"

"Now you are committing the fault of contradicting the word of a
minister of State, a gentleman, an old man, and a client," said the
count. "Give me that deed of sale."

Georges turned over and over the papers in his portfolio.

"That will do; don't disarrange those papers," said the count, taking
the deed from his pocket. "Here is what you are looking for."

Crottat turned the paper back and forth, so astonished was he at
receiving it from the hands of his client.

"What does this mean, monsieur?" he said, finally, to Georges.

"If I had not taken it," said the count, "Pere Leger,--who is by
no means such a ninny as you thought him from his questions
about agriculture, by which he showed that he attended to his own
business,--Pere Leger might have seized that paper and guessed my
purpose. You must give me the pleasure of dining with me, but one on
condition,--that of describing, as you promised, the execution of the
Muslim of Smyrna, and you must also finish the memoirs of some client
which you have certainly read to be so well informed."

"Schlague for blague!" said Leon de Lora, in a whisper, to Joseph
Bridau.

"Gentlemen," said the count to the two notaries and Messieurs Margueron
and de Reybert, "let us go into the next room and conclude this business
before dinner, because, as my friend Mistigris would say: 'Qui esurit
constentit.'"

"Well, he is very good-natured," said Leon de Lora to Georges Marest,
when the count had left the room.

"Yes, HE may be, but my master isn't," said Georges, "and he will
request me to go and blaguer somewhere else."

"Never mind, you like travel," said Bridau.

"What a dressing that boy will get from Monsieur and Madame Moreau!"
cried Mistigris.

"Little idiot!" said Georges. "If it hadn't been for him the count would
have been amused. Well, anyhow,