fellow who
has not two hundred francs a month to spend. But never mind! He
laughs best who laughs last."

And, as he was a man fertile in expedients, he went the next day
to take a walk in the neighborhood of the Mutual Credit; and, having
met M. Favoral by chance, he told him how his son Maxence was ruining
himself for a young lady whose toilets were a scandal, insinuating
delicately that it was his duty, as the head of the family, to put a
stop to such a thing.

This was precisely the time when Maxence was endeavoring to obtain
a situation in the office of the Mutual Credit.

It is true that the idea was not original with him, and that he had
even vehemently rejected it, when, for the first time, Mlle.
Lucienne had suggested it.

"What!" had he exclaimed, "be employed in the same establishment as
my father? Suffer at the office the same intolerable despotism as
at home? I'd rather break stones on the roads."

But Mlle. Lucienne was not the girl to give up so easily a project
conceived and carefully matured by herself.

She returned to the charge with that infinite art of women, who
understand so marvelously well how to turn a position which they
cannot carry in front. She kept the matter so well before him, she
spoke of it so often and so much, on every occasion, and under all
pretexts, that he ended by persuading himself that it was the only
reasonable and practical thing he could do, the only way in which
he had any chance of making his fortune; and so, one evening
overcoming his last hesitations,

"I am going to speak about it to my father," he said to Mlle.
Lucienne.

But whether he had been influenced by M. Costeclar's insinuations,
or for some other reason, M. Favoral had rejected indignantly his
son's request, saying that it was impossible to trust a young man
who was ruining himself for the sake of a miserable creature.

Maxence had become crimson with rage on hearing the woman spoken of
thus, whom he loved to madness, and who, far from ruining him, was
making him.

He returned to the Hotel des Folies in an indescribable state of
exasperation.

"There's the result," he said to Mlle. Lucienne, "of the step which
you have urged me so strongly to take."

She seemed neither surprised nor irritated.

"Very well," she replied simply.

But Maxence could not resign himself so quietly to such a cruel
disappointment; and, not having the slightest suspicion of
Costeclar's doings,

"And such i