ike a powdered wig, gave
him the appearance of a young deputy of the Commons under Louis XVI, the
head of a Barnave at twenty! This face, although the Nabob beheld it for
the first time, was not absolutely unknown to him.

"What do you desire, monsieur?"

Taking the letter which the young man held out to him, he went to a
window in order to see to read it.

"Te! It is from mamma."

He said it with so happy an air; that word "mamma" lit up all his face
with so young, so kind a smile, that the visitor, who had been at first
repulsed by the vulgar aspect of this _parvenu_, felt himself filled
with sympathy for him.

In an undertone the Nabob read these few lines written in an awkward
hand, incorrect and shaky, which contrasted with the large glazed
note-paper, with its heading "Chateau de Saint-Romans."

"My dear son, this letter will be delivered to you by the eldest son of
M. de Gery, the former justice of the peace for Bourg-Saint-Andeol, who
has shown us so much kindness."

The Nabob broke off his reading.

"I ought to have recognised you, M. de Gery. You resemble your father.
Sit down, I beg of you."

Then he finished running through the letter. His mother asked him
nothing precise, but, in the name of the services which the de Gery
family had rendered them in former years, she recommended M. Paul to
him. An orphan, burdened with the care of his two young brothers, he had
been called to the bar in the south, and was now coming to Paris to seek
his fortune. She implored Jansoulet to aid him, "for he needed it badly,
poor fellow," and she signed herself, "Thy mother who pines for thee,
Francoise."

This letter from his mother, whom he had not seen for six years, those
expressions of the south country of which he could hear the intonations
that he knew so well, that coarse handwriting which sketched for him an
adored face, all wrinkled, scored, and cracked, but smiling beneath its
peasant's head-dress, had affected the Nabob. During the six weeks
that he had been in France, lost in the whirl of Paris, the business of
getting settled in his new habitation, he had not yet given a thought
to his dear old lady at home; and now he saw all of her again in these
lines. He remained a moment looking at the letter, which trembled in his
heavy fingers.

Then, this emotion having passed:

"M. de Gery," said he, "I am glad of the opportunity which is about to
permit me to repay to you a little of the kindness which yo