Du Hordel
in a few months, even as later on he was destined to vanquish everybody
and everything much as he pleased. His strength lay in his power of
pleasing and his power of action, a blending of grace with the most
assiduous industry.

About this time Seguin and his uncle, who had never set foot in the
house of the Avenue d'Antin since insanity had reigned there, drew
together again. Their apparent reconciliation was the outcome of a drama
shrouded in secrecy. Seguin, hard up and in debt, cast off by Nora,
who divined his approaching ruin, and preyed upon by other voracious
creatures, had ended by committing, on the turf, one of those indelicate
actions which honest people call thefts. Du Hordel, on being apprised of
the matter, had hastened forward and had paid what was due in order
to avoid a frightful scandal. And he was so upset by the extraordinary
muddle in which he found his nephew's home, once all prosperity, that
remorse came upon him as if he were in some degree responsible for what
had happened, since he had egotistically kept away from his relatives
for his own peace's sake. But he was more particularly won over by his
grandniece Andree, now a delicious young girl well-nigh eighteen years
of age, and therefore marriageable. She alone sufficed to attract him
to the house, and he was greatly distressed by the dangerous state of
abandonment in which he found her.

Her father continued dragging out his worthless life away from home. Her
mother, Valentine, had just emerged from a frightful crisis, her final
rupture with Santerre, who had made up his mind to marry a very wealthy
old lady, which, after all, was the logical destiny of such a crafty
exploiter of women, one who behind his affectation of cultured pessimism
had the vilest and greediest of natures. Valentine, distracted by this
rupture, had now thrown herself into religion, and, like her husband,
disappeared from the house for whole days. She was said to be an
active helpmate of old Count de Navarede, the president of a society of
Catholic propaganda. Gaston, her son, having left Saint-Cyr three months
previously, was now at the Cavalry School of Saumur, so fired with
passion for a military career that he already spoke of remaining a
bachelor, since a soldier's sword should be his only love, his only
spouse. Then Lucie, now nineteen years old, and full of mystical
exaltation, had already entered an Ursuline convent for her novitiate.
And in the big