ngelic kindness.

"What a pity it is that so good a man should be so tiresome!" Victurnien
would say to himself every time that the notary staunched some wound in
his purse.

Chesnel had been left a widower, and childless; he had taken his old
master's son to fill the void in his heart. It was a pleasure to him to
watch the lad driving up the High Street, perched aloft on the box-seat
of the tilbury, whip in hand, and a rose in his button-hole, handsome,
well turned out, envied by every one.

Pressing need would bring Victurnien with uneasy eyes and coaxing
manner, but steady voice, to the modest house in the Rue du Bercail;
there had been losses at cards at the Troisvilles, or the Duc de
Verneuil's, or the prefecture, or the receiver-general's, and the Count
had come to his providence, the notary. He had only to show himself to
carry the day.

"Well, what is it, M. le Comte? What has happened?" the old man would
ask, with a tremor in his voice.

On great occasions Victurnien would sit down, assume a melancholy,
pensive expression, and submit with little coquetries of voice and
gesture to be questioned. Then when he had thoroughly roused the old
man's fears (for Chesnel was beginning to fear how such a course of
extravagance would end), he would own up to a peccadillo which a bill
for a thousand francs would absolve. Chesnel possessed a private income
of some twelve thousand livres, but the fund was not inexhaustible.
The eighty thousand francs thus squandered represented his savings,
accumulated for the day when the Marquis should send his son to Paris,
or open negotiations for a wealthy marriage.

Chesnel was clear-sighted so long as Victurnien was not there before
him. One by one he lost the illusions which the Marquis and his sister
still fondly cherished. He saw that the young fellow could not be
depended upon in the least, and wished to see him married to some
modest, sensible girl of good birth, wondering within himself how a
young man could mean so well and do so ill, for he made promises one day
only to break them all on the next.

But there is never any good to be expected of young men who confess
their sins and repent, and straightway fall into them again. A man of
strong character only confesses his faults to himself, and punishes
himself for them; as for the weak, they drop back into the old ruts
when they find that the bank is too steep to climb. The springs of pride
which lie in a great man's sec