"How noble!" cried Laura. "Too noble!" added M. Levrault. "What said the king?" "The king opened his arms to the Viscount de Montflanquin, and held him long to his heart. I need not add that his eyes were suffused with tears. 'We will do nothing for you,' he at last kindly said; 'since you desire it, you shall be nothing, not even peer of France. But bear in mind that, whatever you ask, whether for your relations or your friends, you shall obtain it, noble young man, from our royal gratitude.'" Great was the admiration of M. Levrault, when Jolibois proceeded to inform him that more than one high-placed personage owed his position to a word of the influential Viscount, by whom he, Jolibois, had himself been offered a prefecture, which his republican principles prevented his accepting. And when, in addition to this interesting information, the ex-clothier learned that Montflanquin was unmarried, he made up his mind that this was the son-in-law who should help him to a peerage. Nor was he shaken in this resolution by a romantic story told by the astute man of parchments, from which it appeared that the Viscount had made a vow of celibacy over the corpse of his first and only love, Miss Fernanda Edmy de Chanteplure, drowned some years previously, on the eve of her wedding-day, before her bridegroom's eyes, and in spite of his heroic efforts to save her. We must pass rapidly over this earlier portion of the book, which is not altogether essential to the principal plot, but is in some degree complete in itself, and has a _dénouement_ so far as the viscount is concerned. That worthy duly makes his appearance at La Trélade, and, as duly, starts, trembles, and is violently agitated on beholding and hearing Miss Levrault, between whom and his lost love, the very noble and eternally regretted Mademoiselle de Chanteplure, a most extraordinary resemblance exists. He succeeds in ingratiating himself with both father and daughter; undertakes to do the honours of the province, and to introduce them to its most illustrious inhabitants. Notwithstanding this assurance, after three months' residence the visitors at La Trélade are limited to a gouty old count, a creditor of Montflanquin's--on whose marriage he, like Jolibois, reckons for reimbursement, and who, in the meantime, condescends to take the air in M. Levrault's carriage--and to a greedy chevalier and self-styled descendant from Godfrey of Bouillon, who would give his entire genealogical tree for a good dinner, and whose gratitude for the succulent repasts to which the viscount is the means of his admission, precludes his own speaking of that adventurous individual, otherwise than in terms of the very highest eulogium. As to Gaspard himself, he lives at La Trélade, leaving it only at night for his ruinous chateau, where the faithful Galaor keeps watch--that youthful and depraved Balderstone being compelled, owing to the extreme penury of