m, which extended, like the passage from back to front of
the house, you could often catch further glimpses of the flower-beds
in a garden of about two acres in extent. Seen from the road, the
brick-work harmonized with the fresh flowers and shrubs, for two
centuries had overlaid it with mosses and green and russet tints. No one
could pass through the town without falling in love with a house with
such charming surroundings, so covered with flowers and mosses to the
roof-ridge, where two pigeons of glazed crockery ware were perched by
way of ornament.

M. Blondet possessed an income of about four thousand livres derived
from land, besides the old house in the town. He meant to avenge his
wrongs legitimately enough. He would leave his house, his lands, his
seat on the bench to his son Joseph, and the whole town knew what he
meant to do. He had made a will in that son's favor; he had gone as
far as the Code will permit a man to go in the way of disinheriting
one child to benefit another; and what was more, he had been putting by
money for the past fifteen years to enable his lout of a son to buy back
from Emile that portion of his father's estate which could not legally
be taken away from him.

Emile Blondet thus turned adrift had contrived to gain distinction in
Paris, but so far it was rather a name than a practical result. Emile's
indolence, recklessness, and happy-go-lucky ways drove his real father
to despair; and when that father died, a half-ruined man, turned out
of office by one of the political reactions so frequent under the
Restoration, it was with a mind uneasy as to the future of a man endowed
with the most brilliant qualities.

Emile Blondet found support in a friendship with a Mlle. de Troisville,
whom he had known before her marriage with the Comte de Montcornet. His
mother was living when the Troisvilles came back after the emigration;
she was related to the family, distantly it is true, but the connection
was close enough to allow her to introduce Emile to the house. She, poor
woman, foresaw the future. She knew that when she died her son would
lose both mother and father, a thought which made death doubly bitter,
so she tried to interest others in him. She encouraged the liking
that sprang up between Emile and the eldest daughter of the house of
Troisville; but while the liking was exceedingly strong on the young
lady's part, a marriage was out of the question. It was a romance on the
pattern of Pau