principles by which it was
regulated were relaxed in favor of the greenhouse and garden. "The
garden was the master's craze," Mlle. Cadot used to say. The master's
blind fondness for Joseph was not a craze in her eyes; she shared the
father's predilection; she pampered Joseph; she darned his stockings;
and would have been better pleased if the money spent on the garden had
been put by for Joseph's benefit.

That garden was kept in marvelous order by a single man; the paths,
covered with river-sand, continually turned over with the rake,
meandered among the borders full of the rarest flowers. Here were all
kinds of color and scent, here were lizards on the walls, legions of
little flower-pots standing out in the sun, regiments of forks and hoes,
and a host of innocent things, a combination of pleasant results to
justify the gardener's charming hobby.

At the end of the greenhouse the judge had set up a grandstand, an
amphitheatre of benches to hold some five or six thousand pelargoniums
in pots--a splendid and famous show. People came to see his geraniums
in flower, not only from the neighborhood, but even from the departments
round about. The Empress Marie Louise, passing through the town, had
honored the curiously kept greenhouse with a visit; so much was she
impressed with the sight, that she spoke of it to Napoleon, and the
old judge received the Cross of the Legion of Honor. But as the learned
gardener never mingled in society at all, and went nowhere except to
the Blandureaus, he had no suspicion of the President's underhand
manoeuvres; and others who could see the President's intentions were far
too much afraid of him to interfere or to warn the inoffensive Blondets.

As for Michu, that young man with his powerful connections gave much
more thought to making himself agreeable to the women in the upper
social circles to which he was introduced by the Cinq-Cygnes, than
to the extremely simple business of a provincial Tribunal. With his
independent means (he had an income of twelve thousand livres), he was
courted by mothers of daughters, and led a frivolous life. He did just
enough at the Tribunal to satisfy his conscience, much as a schoolboy
does his exercises, saying ditto on all occasions, with a "Yes, dear
President." But underneath the appearance of indifference lurked the
unusual powers of the Paris law student who had distinguished himself as
one of the staff of prosecuting counsel before he came to the pr