He was a '_personnage tare_,' but the stain upon his name was of so peculiar a nature that prudence required of many well-known and eminent men that they should not see it. Poor devils who stood outside the demoniac spell of his financial magic art called him an unprincipled swindler: people who had penetrated within the conjuror's circle called him a financial genius, flattered him almost servilely in their longing to share in his colossal enterprises, and if they did so procured for him in return a slight social recognition. And it was curious to observe how much at heart the magnate had this same social recognition, how he sued for the favour of every lofty dignitary, of every capital letter in the social alphabet. He persisted unweariedly in hurling his golden bomb-shells into the stronghold of Parisian society, and at last the fortress capitulated. He was received, as an enemy to be sure, with closed shutters and in silence, but he was received everywhere, at all the embassies, throughout the entire official representative world, and even in some drawing-rooms of the Faubourg. Everywhere he met those who, while he smiled at them in the most friendly way, looked over his shoulder without seeing him, but this he endured serenely. The hour for revenge will come, he said to himself, and almost always it did come! Thanks to an ostentatious benevolence backed by millions, he had of late contrived to improve perceptibly his social standing; at his last ball, several crowned heads had been present. Zoe was right; he was undoubtedly one of the most influential financiers in Europe; she might almost have described him as one of the most influential men. In Paris he was one of the celebrities that are shown to strangers. When he walked past, or rather drove past, for he was physically indolent and avoided all bodily exertion, he was pointed out as Monsieur Grevy or Mdlle. Bernhardt is pointed out. He occupied a vast hotel that he had built after the model of the castle of Chenonceau, but two stories higher, in the neighbourhood of the Park Monceau; in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Avenue Labedoyere the Baroness Zoe's _fiacre_ drew up before this mimicry of vanished feudalism erected by a modern Cr[oe]sus. "Gabrielle's betrothal will make everything smooth," she said to herself. "I am glad to be well rid of the affair!" A Maitre d'Hotel, who, it was said, had formerly been chamberlain to the Duc de Morny, and one of whose duties it was to instruct his present master in the laws of aristocratic etiquette, conducted the baroness with dignified solemnity to the 'small drawing-room' where the Contessa Capriani was wont to receive on quiet evenings.