any chance to
retrieve his broken fortunes--that put him in the running at all. With
the others, in such slighting terms referred to by Madame Vic--Monsieur
Peloux, a notary of standing, and the Major Gontard, of the Twenty-ninth
of the Line--the case was different. It had its sides.

"That this worthy lady reasonably may desire again to wed," declared
Monsieur Fromagin, actual proprietor of the Epicerie Russe--an
establishment liberally patronized by Madame Jolicoeur--"is as true as
that when she goes to make her choosings between these estimable
gentlemen she cannot make a choice that is wrong."

Madame Gauthier, a clear-starcher of position, to whom Monsieur Fromagin
thus addressed himself, was less broadly positive. "That is a matter of
opinion," she answered; and added: "To go no further than the very
beginning, Monsieur should perceive that her choice has exactly fifty
chances in the hundred of going wrong: lying, as it does, between a
meagre, sallow-faced creature of a death-white baldness, and a fine big
pattern of a man, strong and ruddy, with a close-clipped but abundant
thatch on his head, and a moustache that admittedly is superb!"

"Ah, there speaks the woman!" said Monsieur Fromagin, with a patronizing
smile distinctly irritating. "Madame will recognize--if she will but
bring herself to look a little beyond the mere outside--that what I have
advanced is not a matter of opinion but of fact. Observe: Here is
Monsieur Peloux--to whose trifling leanness and aristocratic baldness
the thoughtful give no attention--easily a notary in the very first
rank. As we all know, his services are sought in cases of the most
exigent importance--"

"For example," interrupted Madame Gauthier, "the case of the insurance
solicitor, in whose countless defraudings my own brother was a sufferer:
a creature of a vileness, whose deserts were unnumbered ages of
dungeons--and who, thanks to the chicaneries of Monsieur Peloux, at this
moment walks free as air!"

"It is of the professional duty of advocates," replied Monsieur
Fromagin, sententiously, "to defend their clients; on the successful
discharge of that duty--irrespective of minor details--depends their
fame. Madame neglects the fact that Monsieur Peloux, by his masterly
conduct of the case that she specifies, won for himself from his legal
colleagues an immense applause."

"The more shame to his legal colleagues!" commented Madame Gauthier
curtly.

"But leaving that a