e was now rich; or, externally at any rate, he had
all the advantages of wealth. The King's government, trying to attach
capable men to itself and to strengthen the army, made concessions
about that time to Napoleon's old officers if their known loyalty and
character offered guarantees of fidelity. M. de Montriveau's name once
more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel; he received his
arrears of pay and passed into the Guards. All these favours, one
after another, came to seek the Marquis de Montriveau; he had asked
for nothing however small. Friends had taken the steps for him which he
would have refused to take for himself.

After this, his habits were modified all at once; contrary to his
custom, he went into society. He was well received, everywhere he met
with great deference and respect. He seemed to have found some end
in life; but everything passed within the man, there were no external
signs; in society he was silent and cold, and wore a grave, reserved
face. His social success was great, precisely because he stood out in
such strong contrast to the conventional faces which line the walls
of Paris salons. He was, indeed, something quite new there. Terse
of speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be
haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it. He was something
strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten
with this original person because he was not to be caught by their
flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent
the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian's
grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature only responded to
the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and feeling. And he would very
promptly have been dropped but for the romance that hung about his
adventures and his life; but for the men who cried him up behind his
back; but for a woman who looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman
who was to fill his thoughts.

For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais' curiosity was no less lively
than natural. Chance had so ordered it that her interest in the man
before her had been aroused only the day before, when she heard the
story of one of M. de Montriveau's adventures, a story calculated to
make the strongest impression upon a woman's ever-changing fancy.

During M. de Montriveau's voyage of discovery to the sources of the
Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely the m