ok it as such,--laughed complacently and rubbed his hands.
"Ay, ay, millionnaires are the real aristocrats, for they have power, as
my beau Marquis will soon find. I must bid you good night. Of course I
shall see Madame Gandrin and yourself to-morrow. Prepare for a motley
gathering,--lots of democrats and foreigners, with artists and authors,
and such creatures."

"Is that the reason why you did not invite the Marquis?"

"To be sure; I would not shock so pure a Legitimist by contact with the
sons of the people, and make him still colder to myself. No; when he
comes to my house he shall meet lions and viveurs of the haut ton,
who will play into my hands by teaching him how to ruin himself in the
quickest manner and in the genre Regence. Bon soir, mon vieux."

CHAPTER VI.

The next night Graham in vain looked round for Alain in M. Louvier's
salons, and missed his high-bred mien and melancholy countenance.
M. Louvier had been for some four years a childless widower, but his
receptions were not the less numerously attended, nor his establishment
less magnificently monde for the absence of a presiding lady: very much
the contrary; it was noticeable how much he had increased his status and
prestige as a social personage since the death of his unlamented spouse.

To say truth, she had been rather a heavy drag on his triumphal car.
She had been the heiress of a man who had amassed a great deal of
money,--not in the higher walks of commerce, but in a retail trade.

Louvier himself was the son of a rich money-lender; he had entered life
with an ample fortune and an intense desire to be admitted into those
more brilliant circles in which fortune can be dissipated with eclat. He
might not have attained this object but for the friendly countenance of
a young noble who was then--

"The glass of fashion and the mould of form;"

but this young noble, of whom later we shall hear more, came suddenly to
grief, and when the money-lender's son lost that potent protector, the
dandies, previously so civil, showed him a very cold shoulder.

Louvier then became an ardent democrat, and recruited the fortune he had
impaired by the aforesaid marriage, launched into colossal speculations,
and became enormously rich. His aspirations for social rank now revived,
but his wife sadly interfered with them. She was thrifty by nature;
sympathized little with her husband's genius for accumulation; always
said he would end in a hospita