hat time to look after
his own interests.

This transformation, already begun, suggested the following answer of a
clever woman when asked why, since 1830, she stayed in Paris during the
summer. "Because," she said, "I do not care to visit chateaux which
are now turned into farms." What is to be the future of this question,
getting daily more and more imperative,--that of man to man, the poor
man and the rich man? This book is written to throw some light upon that
terrible social question.

It is easy to understand the perplexities which assailed the general
after he had dismissed Gaubertin. While saying to himself, vaguely,
like other persons free to do or not to do a thing, "I'll dismiss that
scamp"; he had overlooked the risk and forgotten the explosion of his
boiling anger,--the anger of a choleric fire-eater at the moment when a
flagrant imposition forced him to raise the lids of his wilfully blind
eyes.

Montcornet, a land-owner for the first time and a denizen of Paris, had
not provided himself with a steward before coming to Les Aigues; but
after studying the neighborhood carefully he saw it was indispensable to
a man like himself to have an intermediary to manage so many persons of
low degree.

Gaubertin, who discovered during the excitement of the scene (which
lasted more than two hours) the difficulties in which the general would
soon be involved, jumped on his pony after leaving the room where the
quarrel took place, and galloped to Soulanges to consult the Soudrys. At
his first words, "The general and I have parted; whom can we put in my
place without his suspecting it?" the Soudrys understood their friend's
wishes. Do not forget that Soudry, for the last seventeen years chief
of police of the canton, was doubly shrewd through his wife, an adept in
the particular wiliness of a waiting-maid of an Opera divinity.

"We may go far," said Madame Soudry, "before we find any one to suit the
place as well as our poor Sibilet."

"Made to order!" exclaimed Gaubertin, still scarlet with mortification.
"Lupin," he added, turning to the notary, who was present, "go to
Ville-aux-Fayes and whisper it to Marechal, in case that big fire-eater
asks his advice."

Marechal was the lawyer whom his former patron, when buying Les Aigues
for the general, had recommended to Monsieur de Montcornet as legal
adviser.

Sibilet, eldest son of the clerk of the court at Ville-aux-Fayes, a
notary's clerk, without a penny of his