posed ruler of dandies, our unfortunate kinsman, Victor de Mauleon,
shed some of his own radiance on the money-lender's son. But when
Victor's star was eclipsed, Louvier ceased to gleam. The dandies cut
him. In his heart he exults that the dandies now throng to his soirees.

"Bref, the millionaire is especially civil to me,--the more so as I know
intimately two or three eminent journalists; and Louvier takes pains to
plant garrisons in the press. I trust I have explained the grounds on
which I may be a better diplomatist to employ than your avoue; and with
your leave I will go to Louvier at once."

"Let him go," said Raoul. "Enguerrand never fails in anything he
undertakes; especially," he added, with a smile half sad, half tender,
"when one wishes to replenish one's purse."

"I too gratefully grant such an ambassador all powers to treat," said
Alain. "I am only ashamed to consign to him a post so much beneath
his genius," and "his birth" he was about to add, but wisely checked
himself. Enguerrand said, shrugging his shoulders, "You can't do me a
greater kindness than by setting my wits at work. I fall a martyr to
ennui when I am not in action;" he said, and was gone.

"It makes me very melancholy at times," said Raoul, flinging away the
end of his cigar, "to think that a man so clever and so energetic as
Enguerrand should be as much excluded from the service of his country as
if he were an Iroquois Indian. He would have made a great diplomatist."

"Alas!" replied Alain, with a sigh, "I begin to doubt whether we
Legitimists are justified in maintaining a useless loyalty to a
sovereign who renders us morally exiles in the land of our birth."

"I have no doubt on the subject," said Raoul. "We are not justified on
the score of policy, but we have no option at present on the score of
honour. We should gain so much for ourselves if we adopted the State
livery and took the State wages that no man would esteem us as patriots;
we should only be despised as apostates. So long as Henry V. lives,
and does not resign his claim, we cannot be active citizens; we must be
mournful lookers-on. But what matters it? We nobles of the old race
are becoming rapidly extinct. Under any form of government likely to be
established in France we are equally doomed. The French people,
aiming at an impossible equality, will never again tolerate a race of
gentilshommes. They cannot prevent, without destroying commerce and
capital altogether, a q