e horse-dealer--thanks to the
expensive brown bay which certainly went well, the financier was able to
get through his many engagements satisfactorily. He appeared punctually
at the Bourse, sat at several committee tables, and at a quarter to
five, by voting with the ministry, he helped to reassure France
and Europe that the rumors of a ministerial crisis had been totally
unfounded. He voted with the ministry because he had succeeded in
obtaining the favors which he demanded as the price of his vote.

After he had thus nobly fulfilled his duty to himself and his country,
M. Godefroy remembered what he had said to his child on the subject of
Father Christmas, and gave his coachman the address of a dealer in toys.
There he bought, and had put in his carriage, a fantastic rocking-horse,
mounted on casters--a whip in each ear; a box of leaden soldiers--all as
exactly alike as those grenadiers of the Russian regiment of the time
of Paul I, who all had black hair and snub noses; and a score of other
toys, all equally striking and costly. Then, as he returned home, softly
reposing in his well-swung carriage, the rich banker, who, after all,
was a father, began to think with pride of his little boy and to form
plans for his future.

When the child grew up he should have an education worthy of a prince,
and he would be one, too, for there was no longer any aristocracy except
that of money, and his boy would have a capital of about 80,000,000
francs.

If his father, a pettifogging provincial lawyer, who had formerly dined
in the Latin Quarter when in Paris, who had remarked every evening when
putting on a white tie that he looked as fine as if he were going to a
wedding--if he had been able to accumulate an enormous fortune, and to
become thereby a power in the republic; if he had been able to obtain in
marriage a young lady, one of whose ancestors had fallen at Marignano,
what an important personage little Raoul might become. M. Godefroy built
all sorts of air-castles for his boy, forgetting that Christmas is the
birthday of a very poor little child, son of a couple of vagrants, born
in a stable, where the parents only found lodging through charity.

In the midst of the banker's dreams the coachman cried: "Door, please,"
and drove into the yard. As he went up the steps M. Godefroy was
thinking that he had barely time to dress for dinner; but on entering
the vestibule he found all the domestics crowded in front of him in a
st