f a century to come.

Du Croisier hoped to reduce the d'Esgrignons to the last extremity of
poverty; he hoped to see their castle demolished, and their lands sold
piecemeal by auction, through the follies which this harebrained boy was
pretty certain to commit. This was as far as he went; he did not think,
with President du Ronceret, that Victurnien was likely to give justice
another kind of hold upon him. Both men found an ally for their schemes
of revenge in Victurnien's overweening vanity and love of pleasure.
President du Ronceret's son, a lad of seventeen, was admirably fitted
for the part of instigator. He was one of the Count's companions, a new
kind of spy in du Croisier's pay; du Croisier taught him his lesson,
set him to track down the noble and beautiful boy through his better
qualities, and sardonically prompted him to encourage his victim in his
worst faults. Fabien du Ronceret was a sophisticated youth, to whom
such a mystification was attractive; he had precisely the keen brain
and envious nature which finds in such a pursuit as this the absorbing
amusement which a man of an ingenious turn lacks in the provinces.

In three years, between the ages of eighteen and one-and-twenty,
Victurnien cost poor Chesnel nearly eighty thousand francs! And this
without the knowledge of Mlle. Armande or the Marquis. More than half of
the money had been spent in buying off lawsuits; the lad's extravagance
had squandered the rest. Of the Marquis' income of ten thousand livres,
five thousand were necessary for the housekeeping; two thousand more
represented Mlle. Armande's allowance (parsimonious though she was) and
the Marquis' expenses. The handsome young heir-presumptive, therefore,
had not a hundred louis to spend. And what sort of figure can a man make
on two thousand livres? Victurnien's tailor's bills alone absorbed his
whole allowance. He had his linen, his clothes, gloves, and perfumery
from Paris. He wanted a good English saddle-horse, a tilbury, and a
second horse. M. du Croisier had a tilbury and a thoroughbred. Was the
bourgeoisie to cut out the noblesse? Then, the young Count must have a
man in the d'Esgrignon livery. He prided himself on setting the fashion
among young men in the town and the department; he entered that world
of luxuries and fancies which suit youth and good looks and wit so well.
Chesnel paid for it all, not without using, like ancient parliaments,
the right of protest, albeit he spoke with a