r.
Sooner or later his genius should shine out; it had been so with the
others, his predecessors; they had tamed society. Women would love him
when that day came! The example of Napoleon, which, unluckily for this
nineteenth century of ours, has filled a great many ordinary persons
with aspirations after extraordinary destinies,--the example of
Napoleon occurred to Lucien's mind. He flung his schemes to the winds
and blamed himself for thinking of them. For Lucien was so made that
he went from evil to good, or from good to evil, with the same
facility.

Lucien had none of the scholar's love for his retreat; for the past
month indeed he had felt something like shame at the sight of the shop
front, where you could read--

POSTEL (LATE CHARDON), PHARMACEUTICAL CHEMIST,

in yellow letters on a green ground. It was an offence to him that his
father's name should be thus posted up in a place where every carriage
passed.

Every evening, when he closed the ugly iron gate and went up to
Beaulieu to give his arm to Mme. de Bargeton among the dandies of the
upper town, he chafed beyond all reason at the disparity between his
lodging and his fortune.

"I love Mme. de Bargeton; perhaps in a few days she will be mine, yet
here I live in this rat-hole!" he said to himself this evening, as he
went down the narrow passage into the little yard behind the shop.
This evening bundles of boiled herbs were spread out along the wall,
the apprentice was scouring a caldron, and M. Postel himself, girded
about with his laboratory apron, was standing with a retort in his
hand, inspecting some chemical product while keeping an eye upon the
shop door, or if the eye happened to be engaged, he had at any rate an
ear for the bell.

A strong scent of camomile and peppermint pervaded the yard and the
poor little dwelling at the side, which you reached by a short ladder,
with a rope on either side by way of hand-rail. Lucien's room was an
attic just under the roof.

"Good-day, sonny," said M. Postel, that typical, provincial tradesman.
"Are you pretty middling? I have just been experimenting on treacle,
but it would take a man like your father to find what I am looking
for. Ah! he was a famous chemist, he was! If I had only known his gout
specific, you and I should be rolling along in our carriage this day."

The little druggist, whose head was as thick as his heart was kind,
never let a week pass without some allusion to Chardon sen