"Oh, Raoul," answered Enguerrand, throwing himself on a couch in a recess, and making room for De Mauleon beside him--"Raoul is devoting himself to the distressed _ouvriers_ who have chosen to withdraw from work. When he fails to persuade them to return, he forces food and fuel on their wives and children. My good mother encourages him in this costly undertaking, and no one but you who believe in the infinity of human folly would credit me when I tell you that his eloquence has drawn from me all the _argent de poche_ I get from our shop. As for himself, he has sold his horses, and even grudges a cab-fare, saying, 'That is a meal for a family.' Ah! if he had but gone into the Church, what a saint would have deserved canonisation!" "Do not lament--he will probably have what is a better claim than mere saintship on Heaven--martyrdom," said De Mauleon, with a smile in which sarcasm disappeared in melancholy. "Poor Raoul!--and what of my other cousin, the _beau Marquis_? Several months ago his Legitimist faith seemed vacillating--he talked to me very fairly about the duties a Frenchman owed to France, and hinted that he should place his sword at the command of Napoleon III. I have not yet heard of him as a _soldat de France_--I hear a great deal of him as a _viveur de Paris_." "Don't you know why his desire for a military career was frost-bitten?" "No! why?" "Alain came from Bretagne profoundly ignorant of most things known to a _gamin_ of Paris. When he conscientiously overcame the scruples natural to one of his name and told the Duchesse de Tarascon that he was ready to fight under the flag of France whatever its colour, he had a vague reminiscence of ancestral Rochebriants earning early laurels at the head of their regiments. At all events he assumed as a matter of course that he, in the first rank as _gentilhomme_, would enter the army, if as a _sous-lieutenant_, still as _gentilhomme_. But when told that, as he had been at no military college, he could only enter the ranks as a private soldier--herd with private soldiers--for at least two years before, passing through the grade of corporal, his birth, education, habits of life could, with great favour, raise him to the station of a sous- lieutenant, you may conceive that the martial ardour of a Rochebriant was somewhat cooled."