me in
with signs of alarm in her countenance.

"Is the house on fire, Brigitte?"

"Something of the sort," said she. "Here is M. du Croisier wanting to
speak to you----"

"M. du Croisier," repeated the old lawyer. A stab of cold misgiving
gave him so sharp a pang at the heart that he dropped the tongs. "M. du
Croisier here!" thought he, "our chief enemy!"

Du Croisier came in at that moment, like a cat that scents milk in a
dairy. He made a bow, seated himself quietly in the easy-chair which
the lawyer brought forward, and produced a bill for two hundred and
twenty-seven thousand francs, principal and interest, the total amount
of sums advanced to M. Victurnien in bills of exchange drawn upon du
Croisier, and duly honored by him. Of these, he now demanded
immediate payment, with a threat of proceeding to extremities with the
heir-presumptive of the house. Chesnel turned the unlucky letters over
one by one, and asked the enemy to keep the secret. This he engaged to
do if he were paid within forty-eight hours. He was pressed for money
he had obliged various manufacturers; and there followed a series of the
financial fictions by which neither notaries nor borrowers are deceived.
Chesnel's eyes were dim; he could scarcely keep back the tears. There
was but one way of raising the money; he must mortgage his own lands up
to their full value. But when du Croisier learned the difficulty in
the way of repayment, he forgot that he was hard pressed; he no longer
wanted ready money, and suddenly came out with a proposal to buy the old
lawyer's property. The sale was completed within two days. Poor Chesnel
could not bear the thought of the son of the house undergoing a five
years' imprisonment for debt. So in a few days' time nothing remained
to him but his practice, the sums that were due to him, and the house in
which he lived. Chesnel, stripped of all his lands, paced to and fro in
his private office, paneled with dark oak, his eyes fixed on the beveled
edges of the chestnut cross-beams of the ceiling, or on the trellised
vines in the garden outside. He was not thinking of his farms now, or of
Le Jard, his dear house in the country; not he.

"What will become of him? He ought to come back; they must marry him to
some rich heiress," he said to himself; and his eyes were dim, his head
heavy.

How to approach Mlle. Armande, and in what words to break the news to
her, he did not know. The man who had just paid the debts of the