Many of his friends (he was by that time dead, you will
please remark) have contested mordicus this curious fact, declaring it
to be a fable, and upholding the Chevalier de Valois as a respectable
and worthy gentleman whom the liberals calumniated. Luckily for shrewd
players, there are people to be found among the spectators who will
always sustain them. Ashamed of having to defend a piece of wrong-doing,
they stoutly deny it. Do not accuse them of wilful infatuation; such
men have a sense of their dignity; governments set them the example of a
virtue which consists in burying their dead without chanting the Misere
of their defeats. If the chevalier did allow himself this bit of shrewd
practice,--which, by the bye, would have won him the regard of the
Chevalier de Gramont, a smile from the Baron de Foeneste, a shake of
the hand from the Marquis de Moncade,--was he any the less that amiable
guest, that witty talker, that imperturbable card-player, that famous
teller of anecdotes, in whom all Alencon took delight? Besides, in what
way was this action, which is certainly within the rights of a man's own
will,--in what way was it contrary to the ethics of a gentleman? When
so many persons are forced to pay annuities to others, what more natural
than to pay one to his own best friend? But Laius is dead--

To return to the period of which we are writing: after about fifteen
years of this way of life the chevalier had amassed ten thousand and
some odd hundred francs. On the return of the Bourbons, one of his old
friends, the Marquis de Pombreton, formerly lieutenant in the Black
mousquetaires, returned to him--so he said--twelve hundred pistoles
which he had lent to the marquis for the purpose of emigrating. This
event made a sensation; it was used later to refute the sarcasms of
the "Constitutionnel," on the method employed by some emigres in paying
their debts. When this noble act of the Marquis de Pombreton was lauded
before the chevalier, the good man reddened even to his right cheek.
Every one rejoiced frankly at this windfall for Monsieur de Valois,
who went about consulting moneyed people as to the safest manner of
investing this fragment of his past opulence. Confiding in the future of
the Restoration, he finally placed his money on the Grand-Livre at the
moment when the funds were at fifty-six francs and twenty-five centimes.
Messieurs de Lenoncourt, de Navarreins, de Verneuil, de Fontaine, and La
Billardiere, to whom