anged for the welfare of that little angel.

"Oh!" cried Petit-Claud, as they came away, "what a plain girl! I have
been taken in----"

"She looks a lady-like girl," returned Cointet, "and besides, if she
were a beauty, would they give her to you? Eh! my dear fellow, thirty
thousand francs and the influence of Mme. de Senonches and the Comtesse
du Chatelet! Many a small landowner would be wonderfully glad of the
chance, and all the more so since M. Francis du Hautoy is never likely
to marry, and all that he has will go to the girl. Your marriage is as
good as settled."

"How?"

"That is what I am just going to tell you," returned Cointet, and he
gave his companion an account of his recent bold stroke. "M. Milaud is
just about to be appointed attorney for the crown at Nevers, my dear
fellow," he continued; "sell your practice, and in ten years' time you
will be Keeper of the Seals. You are not the kind of a man to draw back
from any service required of you by the Court."

"Very well," said Petit-Claud, his zeal stirred by the prospect of such
a career, "very well, be in the Place du Murier to-morrow at half-past
four; I will see old Sechard in the meantime; we will have a deed of
partnership drawn up, and the father and the son shall be bound thereby,
and delivered to the third person of the trinity--Cointet, to wit."

To return to Lucien in Paris. On the morrow of the loss announced in
his letter, he obtained a _visa_ for his passport, bought a stout holly
stick, and went to the Rue d'Enfer to take a place in the little market
van, which took him as far as Longjumeau for half a franc. He was going
home to Angouleme. At the end of the first day's tramp he slept in a
cowshed, two leagues from Arpajon. He had come no farther than Orleans
before he was very weary, and almost ready to break down, but there he
found a boatman willing to bring him as far as Tours for three francs,
and food during the journey cost him but forty sous. Five days of
walking brought him from Tours to Poitiers, and left him with but five
francs in his pockets, but he summoned up all his remaining strength for
the journey before him.

He was overtaken by night in the open country, and had made up his
mind to sleep out of doors, when a traveling carriage passed by, slowly
climbing the hillside, and, all unknown to the postilion, the occupants,
and the servant, he managed to slip in among the luggage, crouching in
between two trunks lest he