cted of royalism.

However, scarcely was the imperial power established--that is, scarcely
had the emperor re-entered the Tuileries and begun to issue orders from
the closet into which we have introduced our readers,--he found on the
table there Louis XVIII.'s half-filled snuff-box,--scarcely had this
occurred when Marseilles began, in spite of the authorities, to rekindle
the flames of civil war, always smouldering in the south, and it
required but little to excite the populace to acts of far greater
violence than the shouts and insults with which they assailed the
royalists whenever they ventured abroad.

Owing to this change, the worthy shipowner became at that moment--we
will not say all powerful, because Morrel was a prudent and rather
a timid man, so much so, that many of the most zealous partisans of
Bonaparte accused him of "moderation"--but sufficiently influential to
make a demand in favor of Dantes.

Villefort retained his place, but his marriage was put off until a more
favorable opportunity. If the emperor remained on the throne, Gerard
required a different alliance to aid his career; if Louis XVIII.
returned, the influence of M. de Saint-Meran, like his own, could
be vastly increased, and the marriage be still more suitable. The
deputy-procureur was, therefore, the first magistrate of Marseilles,
when one morning his door opened, and M. Morrel was announced.

Any one else would have hastened to receive him; but Villefort was a man
of ability, and he knew this would be a sign of weakness. He made Morrel
wait in the ante-chamber, although he had no one with him, for the
simple reason that the king's procureur always makes every one wait, and
after passing a quarter of an hour in reading the papers, he ordered M.
Morrel to be admitted.

Morrel expected Villefort would be dejected; he found him as he had
found him six weeks before, calm, firm, and full of that glacial
politeness, that most insurmountable barrier which separates the
well-bred from the vulgar man.

He had entered Villefort's office expecting that the magistrate would
tremble at the sight of him; on the contrary, he felt a cold shudder all
over him when he saw Villefort sitting there with his elbow on his desk,
and his head leaning on his hand. He stopped at the door; Villefort
gazed at him as if he had some difficulty in recognizing him; then,
after a brief interval, during which the honest shipowner turned his hat
in his hands,--

"M.