business habits of the old man be forgotten."

"Protect the Bridaus, for they have nothing," said Monsieur Hochon, who
in addition to all other reasons, could not forgive Gilet the terrors he
had endured when fearing the pillage of his house.

Maxence Gilet and Flore Brazier, now secure against all attack, were
very merry over the arrival of another of old Rouget's nephews. They
knew they were able, at the first signal of danger, to make the old man
sign a power of attorney under which the money in the Funds could
be transferred either to Max or Flore. If the will leaving Flore the
principal, should be revoked, an income of fifty thousand francs was a
very tolerable crumb of comfort,--more particularly after squeezing from
the real estate that mortgage of a hundred and forty thousand.

The day after his arrival, Philippe called upon his uncle about ten
o'clock in the morning, anxious to present himself in his dilapidated
clothing. When the convalescent of the Hopital du Midi, the prisoner of
the Luxembourg, entered the room, Flore Brazier felt a shiver pass
over her at the repulsive sight. Gilet himself was conscious of that
particular disturbance both of mind and body, by which Nature sometimes
warns us of a latent enmity, or a coming danger. If there was something
indescribably sinister in Philippe's countenance, due to his recent
misfortunes, the effect was heightened by his clothes. His forlorn blue
great-coat was buttoned in military fashion to the throat, for painful
reasons; and yet it showed much that it pretended to conceal. The bottom
edges of the trousers, ragged like those of an almshouse beggar, were
the sign of abject poverty. The boots left wet splashes on the floor,
as the mud oozed from fissures in the soles. The gray hat, which the
colonel held in his hand, was horribly greasy round the rim. The malacca
cane, from which the polish had long disappeared, must have stood in all
the corners of all the cafes in Paris, and poked its worn-out end into
many a corruption. Above the velvet collar, rubbed and worn till the
frame showed through it, rose a head like that which Frederick Lemaitre
makes up for the last act in "The Life of a Gambler,"--where the
exhaustion of a man still in the prime of life is betrayed by the
metallic, brassy skin, discolored as if with verdigris. Such tints are
seen on the faces of debauched gamblers who spend their nights in play:
the eyes are sunken in a dusky circle, the lids ar