names connected with the immemorial legends of the province.

The very bustle of a railway, with its crowd and quickness and
unceremonious democracy of travel, served to pain and confound and
humiliate that sense of individual dignity in which he had been
nurtured. He felt that, once away from Rochebriant, he was but a cipher
in the sum of human beings. Arrived at Paris, and reaching the gloomy
hotel to which he had been recommended, he greeted even the desolation
of that solitude which is usually so oppressive to a stranger in the
metropolis of his native land. Loneliness was better than the loss of
self in the reek and pressure of an unfamiliar throng. For the first few
days he had wandered over Paris without calling even on the 'avoue' to
whom M. Hebert had directed him. He felt with the instinctive acuteness
of a mind which, under sounder training, would have achieved no mean
distinction, that it was a safe precaution to imbue himself with the
atmosphere of the place, and seize on those general ideas which in great
capitals are so contagious that they are often more accurately caught
by the first impressions than by subsequent habit, before he brought his
mind into collision with those of the individuals he had practically to
deal with.

At last he repaired to the 'avoue,' M. Gandrin, Rue St. Florentin. He
had mechanically formed his idea of the abode and person of an 'avoue'
from his association with M. Hebert. He expected to find a dull house
in a dull street near the centre of business, remote from the haunts of
idlers, and a grave man of unpretending exterior and matured years.

He arrived at a hotel newly fronted, richly decorated, in the
fashionable quartier close by the Tuileries. He entered a wide 'porte
cochere,' and was directed by the concierge to mount 'au premier.'
There, first detained in an office faultlessly neat, with spruce young
men at smart desks, he was at length admitted into a noble salon, and
into the presence of a gentleman lounging in an easy-chair before a
magnificent bureau of 'marqueterie, genre Louis Seize,' engaged in
patting a white curly lapdog, with a pointed nose and a shrill bark.

The gentleman rose politely on his entrance, and released the dog, who,
after sniffing the Marquis, condescended not to bite.

"Monsieur le Marquis," said M. Gandrin, glancing at the card and the
introductory note from M. Hebert, which Alain had sent in, and which
lay on the 'secretaire' beside hea