it is very well as a finish to the toilet. It looks very neat on a
black coat buttoned up."

"And makes you resemble the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Reichstadt."

"It is for that reason you see me so early."

"Because you have the order of Charles III., and you wish to announce
the good news to me?"

"No, because I passed the night writing letters,--five and twenty
despatches. I returned home at daybreak, and strove to sleep; but my
head ached and I got up to have a ride for an hour. At the Bois de
Boulogne, ennui and hunger attacked me at once,--two enemies who rarely
accompany each other, and who are yet leagued against me, a sort of
Carlo-republican alliance. I then recollected you gave a breakfast this
morning, and here I am. I am hungry, feed me; I am bored, amuse me."

"It is my duty as your host," returned Albert, ringing the bell, while
Lucien turned over, with his gold-mounted cane, the papers that lay on
the table. "Germain, a glass of sherry and a biscuit. In the meantime,
my dear Lucien, here are cigars--contraband, of course--try them, and
persuade the minister to sell us such instead of poisoning us with
cabbage leaves."

"Peste, I will do nothing of the kind; the moment they come from
government you would find them execrable. Besides, that does not concern
the home but the financial department. Address yourself to M. Humann,
section of the indirect contributions, corridor A., No. 26."

"On my word," said Albert, "you astonish me by the extent of your
knowledge. Take a cigar."

"Really, my dear Albert," replied Lucien, lighting a manilla at a
rose-colored taper that burnt in a beautifully enamelled stand--"how
happy you are to have nothing to do. You do not know your own good
fortune!"

"And what would you do, my dear diplomatist," replied Morcerf, with a
slight degree of irony in his voice, "if you did nothing? What? private
secretary to a minister, plunged at once into European cabals and
Parisian intrigues; having kings, and, better still, queens, to protect,
parties to unite, elections to direct; making more use of your cabinet
with your pen and your telegraph than Napoleon did of his battle-fields
with his sword and his victories; possessing five and twenty thousand
francs a year, besides your place; a horse, for which Chateau-Renaud
offered you four hundred louis, and which you would not part with; a
tailor who never disappoints you; with the opera, the jockey-club, and
other diversion