be fitted
for any position. Unwilling to consent to a separation from his
daughter, he had procured a governess to take charge of her education.

Sometimes his friends accused him of an inordinate ambition for his
children; but he always shook his head sadly, as he replied:

"If _I_ can only insure them a modest and comfortable future! But what
folly it is to count upon the future. Thirty years ago, who could have
foreseen that the Sairmeuse family would be deprived of their estates?"

With such opinions he should have been a good master; he was, but no one
thought the better of him on that account. His former comrades could not
forgive him for his sudden elevation.

They seldom spoke of him without wishing his ruin in ambiguous words.

Alas! the evil days came. Toward the close of the year 1812, he lost his
wife, the disasters of the year 1813 swept away a large portion of his
personal fortune, which had been invested in a manufacturing enterprise.

Compromised by the first Restoration, he was obliged to conceal himself
for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still
in Paris, caused him serious disquietude.

Only the evening before, he had thought himself the most unfortunate of
men.

But here was another misfortune menacing him; a misfortune so terrible
that all the others were forgotten.

From the day on which he had purchased Sairmeuse to this fatal Sunday in
August, 1815, was an interval of twenty years.

Twenty years! And it seemed to him only yesterday that, blushing and
trembling, he had laid those piles of louis d'or upon the desk of the
receiver of the district.

Had he dreamed it?

He had not dreamed it. His entire life, with its struggles and its
miseries, its hopes and its fears, its unexpected joys and its blighted
hopes, all passed before him.

Lost in these memories, he had quite forgotten the present situation,
when a commonplace incident, more powerful than the voice of his
daughter, brought him back to the terrible reality. The gate leading to
the Chateau de Sairmeuse, to _his_ chateau, was found to be locked.

He shook it with a sort of rage; and, being unable to break the
fastening, he found some relief in breaking the bell.

On hearing the noise, the gardener came running to the scene of action.

"Why is this gate closed?" demanded M. Lacheneur, with unwonted violence
of manner. "By what right do you barricade my house when I, the master,
am without?"