he was known, he said, obtained for him, from the
king's privy purse, a pension of three hundred francs, and sent him,
moreover, the cross of Saint-Louis. Never was it known positively by
what means the old chevalier obtained these two solemn consecrations of
his title and merits. But one thing is certain; the cross of Saint-Louis
authorized him to take the rank of retired colonel in view of his
service in the Catholic armies of the West.

Besides his fiction of an annuity, about which no one at the present
time knew anything, the chevalier really had, therefore, a bona fide
income of a thousand francs. But in spite of this bettering of his
circumstances, he made no change in his life, manners, or appearance,
except that the red ribbon made a fine effect on his maroon-colored
coat, and completed, so to speak, the physiognomy of a gentleman.
After 1802, the chevalier sealed his letters with a very old seal,
ill-engraved to be sure, by which the Casterans, the d'Esgrignons, the
Troisvilles were enabled to see that he bore: _Party of France, two
cottises gemelled gules, and gules, five mascles or, placed end to end;
on a chief sable, a cross argent_. For crest, a knight's helmet. For
motto: "Valeo." Bearing such noble arms, the so-called bastard of the
Valois had the right to get into all the royal carriages of the world.

Many persons envied the quiet existence of this old bachelor, spent
on whist, boston, backgammon, reversi, and piquet, all well played,
on dinners well digested, snuff gracefully inhaled, and tranquil walks
about the town. Nearly all Alencon believed this life to be exempt from
ambitions and serious interests; but no man has a life as simple as
envious neighbors attribute to him. You will find in the most out-of-the
way villages human mollusks, creatures apparently dead, who have
passions for lepidoptera or for conchology, let us say,--beings who will
give themselves infinite pains about moths, butterflies, or the concha
Veneris. Not only did the chevalier have his own particular shells,
but he cherished an ambitious desire which he pursued with a craft
so profound as to be worthy of Sixtus the Fifth: he wanted to marry a
certain rich old maid, with the intention, no doubt, of making her a
stepping-stone by which to reach the more elevated regions of the court.
There, then, lay the secret of his royal bearing and of his residence in
Alencon.

CHAPTER II. SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS

On a Wednesd