ned general popularity and good-will, and was one of those whom
the policy of the First Consul led him to conciliate. He had long since
retired from the more vulgar departments of trade, but continued to
flourish as an army contractor. He had a large hotel and a splendid
establishment; he was one of the great capitalists of Paris. The
relationship between Dalibard and Bellanger was not very close,--it was
that of cousins twice removed; and during Dalibard's previous residence
at Paris, each embracing different parties, and each eager in his
career, the blood-tie between them had not been much thought of, though
they were good friends, and each respected the other for the discretion
with which he had kept aloof from the more sanguinary excesses of the
time. As Bellanger was not many years older than Dalibard; as the former
had but just married in the year 1791, and had naturally before him the
prospect of a family; as his fortunes at that time, though rising, were
unconfirmed; and as some nearer relations stood between them, in
the shape of two promising, sturdy nephews,--Dalibard had not
then calculated on any inheritance from his cousin. On his return,
circumstances were widely altered: Bellanger had been married some
years, and no issue had blessed his nuptials. His nephews, draughted
into the conscription, had perished in Egypt. Dalibard apparently became
his nearest relative.

To avarice or to worldly ambition there was undoubtedly something very
dazzling in the prospect thus opened to the eyes of Olivier Dalibard.
The contractor's splendid mode of living, vying with that of the
fermier-general of old, the colossal masses of capital by which he
backed and supported speculations that varied with an ingenuity rendered
practical and profound by experience, inflamed into fever the morbid
restlessness of fancy and intellect which characterized the evil
scholar; for that restlessness seemed to supply to his nature vices not
constitutional to it. Dalibard had not the avarice that belongs either
to a miser or a spendthrift. In his youth, his books and the simple
desires of an abstract student sufficed to his wants, and a habit of
method and order, a mechanical calculation which accompanied all his
acts, from the least to the greatest, preserved him, even when
most poor, from neediness and want. Nor was he by nature vain and
ostentatious,--those infirmities accompany a larger and more luxurious
nature. His philosophy rather