consciousness of the wide difference between their relative positions. Nor was this all; one day, some six months after, Madame de Candolles took occasion to pay a visit to the préfecture, and leading M. Durand aside, to solicit him for the still unfilled post of librarian, in favor of Ferdinand’s foster-brother, a market-gardener’s son! He was, she said, an exceedingly clever young man, knew Latin, Greek, and all sorts of things, had just served his time in a notary’s office, and would be the very thing for the situation proposed!—(successor to Madame Durand’s own nephew!) The préfet was sufficiently master of himself to refuse politely, alleging that he had already made choice of a librarian; but when Madame Durand heard the story, she vowed undying hatred to all aristocrats, and whenever she afterward met Madame de Candolles, tossed her plumed head as though she had been a war-horse. So ended our hero’s first and only chance of official employment, rejected, we have seen with what disdain. He had then attained the age of twenty-three. In the course of the following year General de Candolles died, leaving all he possessed to his nephew. This “all” was not much, still it was something—some twenty-odd thousand francs, or so—and if the widow had lived long enough, it might have increased; but, unfortunately, before Ferdinand had reached the age of twenty-five, his mother also died, leaving him completely—positively “alone in the world.” With what Madame de Candolles left (her chief resources had come from a small annuity) Ferdinand found himself at the head of about two thousand pounds sterling. With two thousand francs a year, which this would yield, he might have lived comfortably enough in any part of the provinces, and indulged in a quiet laugh at the préfet, who wanted to make a _bibliothécaire_ of him. But, of course, such sensible arrangements did not enter into his head. He was (the _naïf_ royalist and aristocrat!) wild with admiration of “Hernani” and _le Roi s’amuse_, and for the moment thought of little beyond the soul-stirring delights of seeing Bocage in _Antony_, or Madame Dorval in _Marion Delorme_. To Paris, of course, tended all his desires, and to Paris he accordingly went, as soon as the first months of mourning were expired, and he had put what he termed order into his affairs.