er, and the
latter, by sparing the steward's self-love would have given him a chance
to withdraw quietly. Gaubertin, in that case, would have left his late
employer in peace, and possibly he might have taken himself and his
savings to Paris for investment. But being, as he was, ignominiously
dismissed, the man conceived against his late master one of those bitter
hatreds which are literally a part of existence in provincial life, the
persistency, duration, and plots of which would astonish diplomatists
who are trained to let nothing astonish them. A burning desire for
vengeance led him to settle at Ville-aux-Fayes, and to take a position
where he could injure Montcornet and stir up sufficient enmity against
to force him to sell Les Aigues.

The general was deceived by appearances; for Gaubertin's external
behavior was not of a nature to warn or to alarm him. The late steward
followed his old custom of pretending, not exactly poverty, but limited
means. For years he had talked of his wife and three children, and the
heavy expenses of a large family. Mademoiselle Laguerre, to whom he had
declared himself too poor to educate his son in Paris, paid the costs
herself, and allowed her dear godson (for she was Claude Gaubertin's
sponsor) two thousand francs a year.

The day after the quarrel, Gaubertin came, with a keeper named
Courtecuisse, and demanded with much insolence his release in full of
all claims, showing the general the one he had obtained from his late
mistress in such flattering terms, and asking, ironically, that a
search should be made for the property, real and otherwise, which he was
supposed to have stolen. If he had received fees from the wood-merchants
on their purchases and from the farmers on their leases, Mademoiselle
Laguerre, he said, had always allowed it; not only did she gain by the
bargains he made, but everything went on smoothly without troubling
her. The country-people would have died, he remarked, for Mademoiselle,
whereas the general was laying up for himself a store of difficulties.

Gaubertin--and this trait is frequently to be seen in the majority of
those professions in which the property of others can be taken by means
not foreseen by the Code--considered himself a perfectly honest man.
In the first place, he had so long had possession of the money
extorted from Mademoiselle Laguerre's farmers through fear, and paid in
assignats, that he regarded it as legitimately acquired. It was a m