elle, under pretext of a new departure.

"I am to be the head of a family," he said to her; "you know the
reputation of land-stewards; my father-in-law is a republican of Roman
austerity, and a man of influence as well; I want to prove to him that I
am as upright as he."

Mademoiselle Laguerre accepted his accounts at once in very flattering
terms.

In those earlier days the steward had endeavored, in order to win the
confidence of Madame des Aigues (as Mademoiselle was then called) to
repress the depredations of the peasantry; fearing, and not without
reason, that the revenues would suffer too severely, and that his
private bonus from the buyers of the timber would sensibly diminish.
But in those days the sovereign people felt the soil was their own
everywhere; Madame was afraid of the surrounding kings and told her
Richelieu that the first desire of her soul was to die in peace. The
revenues of the late singer were so far in excess of her expenses that
she allowed all the worst, and, as it proved, fatal precedents to be
established. To avoid a lawsuit, she allowed the neighbors to encroach
upon her land. Knowing that the park walls were sufficient protection,
she did not fear any interruption of her personal comfort, and cared for
nothing but her peaceful existence, true philosopher that she was! A
few thousand a year more or less, the indemnities exacted by the
wood-merchants for the damages committed by the peasants,--what were
they to a careless and extravagant Opera-girl, who had gained her
hundred thousand francs a year at the cost of pleasure only, and who had
just submitted, without a word of remonstrance, to a reduction of two
thirds of an income of sixty thousand francs?

"Dear me!" she said, in the easy tone of the wantons of the old time,
"people must live, even if they are republicans."

The terrible Mademoiselle Cochet, her maid and female vizier, had tried
to enlighten her mistress when she saw the ascendency Gaubertin was
obtaining over one whom he began by calling "Madame" in defiance of
the revolutionary laws about equality; but Gaubertin, in his turn,
enlightened Mademoiselle Cochet by showing her a so-called denunciation
sent to his father, the prosecuting attorney, in which she was
vehemently accused of corresponding with Pitt and Coburg. From that time
forward the two powers went on shares--shares a la Montgomery.
Cochet praised Gaubertin to Madame, and Gaubertin praised Cochet. The
waiting-