ms
in pots--a splendid and famous show. People came to see his geraniums
in flower, not only from the neighborhood, but even from the
departments round about. The Empress Marie Louise, passing through the
town, had honored the curiously kept greenhouse with a visit; so much
was she impressed with the sight, that she spoke of it to Napoleon,
and the old judge received the Cross of the Legion of Honor. But as
the learned gardener never mingled in society at all, and went nowhere
except to the Blandureaus, he had no suspicion of the President's
underhand manoeuvres; and others who could see the President's
intentions were far too much afraid of him to interfere or to warn the
inoffensive Blondets.

As for Michu, that young man with his powerful connections gave much
more thought to making himself agreeable to the women in the upper
social circles to which he was introduced by the Cinq-Cygnes, than to
the extremely simple business of a provincial Tribunal. With his
independent means (he had an income of twelve thousand livres), he was
courted by mothers of daughters, and led a frivolous life. He did just
enough at the Tribunal to satisfy his conscience, much as a schoolboy
does his exercises, saying ditto on all occasions, with a "Yes, dear
President." But underneath the appearance of indifference lurked the
unusual powers of the Paris law student who had distinguished himself
as one of the staff of prosecuting counsel before he came to the
provinces. He was accustomed to taking broad views of things; he could
do rapidly what the President and Blondet could only do after much
thinking, and very often solved knotty points for them. In delicate
conjunctures the President and Vice-President took counsel with their
junior, confided thorny questions to him, and never failed to wonder
at the readiness with which he brought back a task in which old
Blondet found nothing to criticise. Michu was sure of the influence of
the most crabbed aristocrats, and he was young and rich; he lived,
therefore, above the level of departmental intrigues and pettinesses.
He was an indispensable man at picnics, he frisked with young ladies
and paid court to their mothers, he danced at balls, he gambled like a
capitalist. In short, he played his part of young lawyer of fashion to
admiration; without, at the same time, compromising his dignity, which
he knew how to assert at the right moment like a man of spirit. He won
golden opinions by the manner i