the magistracy in 1830. His name is
Monsieur Joseph. Though you have only been with us one day, I will tell
you that in the world Monsieur Nicolas once bore the name of the Marquis
de Montauran, and Monsieur Joseph that of Lecamus, Baron de Tresnes; but
for us, as for the world, those names no longer exist. These gentlemen
are without heirs; they only advance by a little the oblivion which
awaits their names; they are simply Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur
Joseph, as you will be Monsieur Godefroid."

As he heard those names,--one so celebrated in the annals of royalism
by the catastrophe which put an end to the uprising of the Chouans; the
other so revered in the halls of the old parliament of Paris,--Godefroid
could not repress a quiver. He looked at these relics of the grandest
things of the fallen monarchy,--the _noblesse_ and the law,--and he
could see no movement of the features, no change in the countenance,
that revealed the presence of a worldly thought. Those men no longer
remembered, or did not choose to remember, what they had been. This was
Godefroid's first lesson.

"Each of your names, gentlemen, is a whole history in itself," he said
respectfully.

"Yes, the history of my time,--ruins," replied Monsieur Joseph.

"You are in good company," said Monsieur Alain.

The latter can be described in a word: he was the small bourgeois of
Paris, the worthy middle-class being with a kindly face, relieved by
pure white hair, but made insipid by an eternal smile.

As for the priest, the Abbe de Veze, his presence said all. The priest
who fulfils his mission is known by the first glance he gives you, and
by the glance that others who know him give to him.

That which struck Godefroid most forcibly at first was the profound
respect which the four lodgers manifested for Madame de la Chanterie.
They all seemed, even the priest, in spite of the sacred character his
functions gave him, to regard her as a queen. Godefroid also noticed
their sobriety. Each seemed to eat only for nourishment. Madame de la
Chanterie took, as did the rest, a single peach and half a bunch of
grapes; but she told her new lodger, as she offered him the various
dishes, not to imitate such temperance.

Godefroid's curiosity was excited to the highest degree by this
first entrance on his new life. When they returned to the salon after
breakfast, he was left alone; Madame de la Chanterie retired to the
embrasure of a window and held a little priv