s, his knowledge of the old law of the land and
subsequent legislation, should by rights have brought him far in his
profession; but he had this much in common with some few great spirits:
he entertained a prodigious contempt for his own special knowledge, and
reserved all his pretentions, leisure, and capacity for a second pursuit
unconnected with the law. To this pursuit he gave his almost exclusive
attention. The good man was passionately fond of gardening. He was in
correspondence with some of the most celebrated amateurs; it was
his ambition to create new species; he took an interest in botanical
discoveries, and lived, in short, in the world of flowers. Like
all florists, he had a predilection for one particular plant; the
pelargonium was his especial favorite. The court, the cases that came
before it, and his outward life were as nothing to him compared with the
inward life of fancies and abundant emotions which the old man led. He
fell more and more in love with his flower-seraglio; and the pains which
he bestowed on his garden, the sweet round of the labors of the months,
held Goodman Blondet fast in his greenhouse. But for that hobby he would
have been a deputy under the Empire, and shone conspicuous beyond a
doubt in the Corps Legislatif.

His marriage was the second cause of his obscurity. As a man of forty,
he was rash enough to marry a girl of eighteen, by whom he had a son
named Joseph in the first year of their marriage. Three years afterwards
Mme. Blondet, then the prettiest woman in the town, inspired in the
prefect of the department a passion which ended only with her death.
The prefect was the father of her second son Emile; the whole town knew
this, old Blondet himself knew it. The wife who might have roused
her husband's ambition, who might have won him away from his flowers,
positively encouraged the judge in his botanical tastes. She no more
cared to leave the place than the prefect cared to leave his prefecture
so long as his mistress lived.

Blondet felt himself unequal at his age to a contest with a young wife.
He sought consolation in his greenhouse, and engaged a very pretty
servant-maid to assist him to tend his ever-changing bevy of beauties.
So while the judge potted, pricked out, watered, layered, slipped,
blended, and induced his flowers to break, Mme. Blondet spent his
substance on the dress and finery in which she shone at the prefecture.
One interest alone had power to draw her away