s apprehension as to the reception
awaiting him at Angouleme.

"He has doubts of us; has it come to this?" said Mme. Chardon.

"The unhappy young man has come back to you on foot, enduring the most
terrible hardships by the way; he is prepared to enter the humblest
walks in life--if so he may make reparation."

"Monsieur," Lucien's sister said, "in spite of the wrong he has done us,
I love my brother still, as we love the dead body when the soul has left
it; and even so, I love him more than many sisters love their brothers.
He has made us poor indeed; but let him come to us, he shall share the
last crust of bread, anything indeed that he has left us. Oh, if he had
never left us, monsieur, we should not have lost our heart's treasure."

"And the woman who took him from us brought him back on her carriage!"
exclaimed Mme. Chardon. "He went away sitting by Mme. de Bargeton's side
in her caleche, and he came back behind it."

"Can I do anything for you?" asked the good cure, seeking an opportunity
to take leave.

"A wound in the purse is not fatal, they say, monsieur," said Mme.
Chardon, "but the patient must be his own doctor."

"If you have sufficient influence with my father-in-law to induce him to
help his son, you would save a whole family," said Eve.

"He has no belief in you, and he seemed to me to be very much
exasperated against your husband," answered the old cure. He retained
an impression, from the ex-pressman's rambling talk, that the Sechards'
affairs were a kind of wasps' nest with which it was imprudent to
meddle, and his mission being fulfilled, he went to dine with his nephew
Postel. That worthy, like the rest of Angouleme, maintained that the
father was in the right, and soon dissipated any little benevolence that
the old gentleman was disposed to feel towards the son and his family.

"With those that squander money something may be done," concluded little
Postel, "but those that make experiments are the ruin of you."

The cure went home; his curiosity was thoroughly satisfied, and this
is the end and object of the exceeding interest taken in other people's
business in the provinces. In the course of the evening the poet was
duly informed of all that had passed in the Sechard family, and the
journey was represented as a pilgrimage undertaken from motives of the
purest charity.

"You have run your brother-in-law and sister into debt to the amount of
ten or twelve thousand francs," said the Abb