Count Wenceslas went to bed in sheets of purple, without a rose-leaf to wrinkle them, that Favor can make for us--Favor, the halting divinity who moves more slowly for men of genius than either Justice or Fortune, because Jove has not chosen to bandage her eyes. Hence, lightly deceived by the display of impostors, and attracted by their frippery and trumpets, she spends the time in seeing them and the money in paying them which she ought to devote to seeking out men of merit in the nooks where they hide. It will now be necessary to explain how Monsieur le Baron Hulot had contrived to count up his expenditure on Hortense's wedding portion, and at the same time to defray the frightful cost of the charming rooms where Madame Marneffe was to make her home. His financial scheme bore that stamp of talent which leads prodigals and men in love into the quagmires where so many disasters await them. Nothing can demonstrate more completely the strange capacity communicated by vice, to which we owe the strokes of skill which ambitious or voluptuous men can occasionally achieve--or, in short, any of the Devil's pupils. On the day before, old Johann Fischer, unable to pay thirty thousand francs drawn for on him by his nephew, had found himself under the necessity of stopping payment unless the Baron could remit the sum. This ancient worthy, with the white hairs of seventy years, had such blind confidence in Hulot--who, to the old Bonapartist, was an emanation from the Napoleonic sun--that he was calmly pacing his anteroom with the bank clerk, in the little ground-floor apartment that he rented for eight hundred francs a year as the headquarters of his extensive dealings in corn and forage. "Marguerite is gone to fetch the money from close by," said he. The official, in his gray uniform braided with silver, was so convinced of the old Alsatian's honesty, that he was prepared to leave the thirty thousand francs' worth of bills in his hands; but the old man would not let him go, observing that the clock had not yet struck eight. A cab drew up, the old man rushed into the street, and held out his hand to the Baron with sublime confidence--Hulot handed him out thirty thousand-franc notes. "Go on three doors further, and I will tell you why," said Fischer. "Here, young man," he said, returning to count out the money to the bank emissary, whom he then saw to the door. When the clerk was out of sight, Fischer called back the cab containing his august nephew, Napoleon's right hand, and said, as he led him into the house: "You do not want them to know at the Bank of France that you paid me the thirty thousand francs, after endorsing the bills?--It was bad enough to see them signed by such a man as you!--"