hat seventy-two men
should plot the assassination of a sovereign on whose life interests so
numerous and so watchful depend, and imagine they could keep a secret
which any drunkard amongst them would blab out, any tatterdemalion would
sell, is a betise so gross that I think it highly probable. But pardon
me if I look upon the politics of Paris much as I do upon its mud--one
must pass through it when one walks in the street. One changes one's
shoes before entering the salon. A word with you, Enguerrand,"--and
taking his kinsman's arm he drew him aside from the circle. "What has
become of your brother? I see nothing of him now."

"Oh, Raoul," answered Enguerrand, throwing himself on a couch in a
recess, and making room for De Mauleon beside him--"Raoul is devoting
himself to the distressed ouvriers who have chosen to withdraw from
work. When he fails to persuade them to return, he forces food and
fuel on their wives and children. My good mother encourages him in this
costly undertaking, and no one but you who believe in the infinity of
human folly would credit me when I tell you that his eloquence has drawn
from me all the argent de poche I get from our shop. As for himself,
he has sold his horses, and even grudges a cab-fare, saying, 'That is a
meal for a family.' Ah! if he had but gone into the Church, what a saint
would have deserved canonisation!"

"Do not lament--he will probably have what is a better claim than mere
saintship on Heaven--martyrdom," said De Mauleon, with a smile in which
sarcasm disappeared in melancholy. "Poor Raoul!--and what of my other
cousin, the beau Marquis? Several months ago his Legitimist faith seemed
vacillating--he talked to me very fairly about the duties a Frenchman
owed to France, and hinted that he should place his sword at the command
of Napoleon III. I have not yet heard of him as a soldat de France--I
hear a great deal of him as a viveur de Paris."

"Don't you know why his desire for a military career was frost-bitten?"

"No! why?"

"Alain came from Bretagne profoundly ignorant of most things known to a
gamin of Paris. When he conscientiously overcame the scruples natural to
one of his name and told the Duchesse de Tarascon that he was ready
to fight under the flag of France whatever its colour, he had a vague
reminiscence of ancestral Rochebriants earning early laurels at the head
of their regiments. At all events he assumed as a matter of course that
he, in the first rank as