Suddenly we heard that M. Deviolaine was going to retire with his family to his estate of Saint-Remy, and let his house at Villers-Cotterets to the Count de Ribbing. So the house wherein I had been brought up, the house peopled for me with a host of memories, was to pass from the hands of a relative into the hands of a friend The beautiful garden had taken M. de Leuven's special fancy; he hoped to give vent in it to his hobby for gardening interrupted by the successive sales of Brunoy and Quincy. Furthermore, the count had not met with any more persecution, and whether it was because Louis XVIII. did not know of his being in France, or whether the king closed his eyes to the fact, he was left in undisturbed peacefulness. De Leuven and his father settled, then, in Villers-Cotterets, where Madame de Leuven joined them in a fortnight's time. As for de la Ponce, he rented a house at the end of the rue de Largny, the first house on the left as you come from Paris: it had a large garden and a fine courtyard. My time was soon divided into three portions--one was devoted to my friendships, another to love-makings, and the third to my legal work. The reader may suggest that my mother was perhaps a little neglected in all this. Is a mother ever forgotten? Is she not always there, whether present or absent? Did I not go in and out of my home ten or twenty times a day? Did I not kiss my mother each time I went in? Every day de Leuven, de la Ponce and I managed to meet. Generally it was at de la Ponce's house: we transformed the courtyard which I have mentioned into a shooting range, and every day we used up twenty or thirty balls. De Leuven had excellent German pistols (_Kukenreiter_). These pistols were marvellously true, and we soon were able to shoot with such precision, all three of us, that when anyone doubted our powers, we would take it in turn to hold the piece of cardboard which served as a target, whilst the others fired. And we never any of us received a single graze! I remember one day after heavy rain we found I do not know how many frogs in that gloomy, damp courtyard. Here was novel game for us to pot at, and we exterminated every frog with our pistols. Every little while de Leuven read us a fable or an elegy of his own composition; but he was cured of making geographical errors by the nocturnal misadventure at Villers-Hellon and no longer mistook the South for the North, or Spain for Siberia. One morning great news spread through the town. Three strangers had just come to stay with M. de Leuven: M. Arnault and his two sons, Telleville and Louis Arnault. M. Arnault, the author of _Germanicus_ and of _Marius à Minturnes_, was at that time a splendid-looking old man of sixty, still full of life in spite of his curling white locks, which were as fine as silk. He had a most superabundant flow of spirits and excelled at repartee; he could strike as rapidly at his object as the most accomplished fencing-master could parry a blow or deal a