[Footnote 5: In French law, a _sommation respectueuse_ is an extrajudicial document, which a young man of twenty-five or a young woman of twenty-one, proposing to marry without parental consent, is required to serve upon his or her parents, requesting advice concerning the marriage.] [Footnote 6: Merlin, _Répertoire de Jurisprudence_, "Puissance Paternelle," Sect. III, § 1:--"Basset mentions a sentence pronounced by a father in person, by the advice of his family, against his son. He declared him to be unworthy to succeed, and sentenced him to the galleys for twenty years. The procureur-général of the Parliament of Grenoble appealed from this sentence as too light, and by decree of September 19, 1663, the son was sentenced to the galleys for life."] VII ALL SAVE HONOR Four weeks had passed since the young man had listened to the Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp's wrathful stride through the reception-room of his apartment, without calling him back to cry out the truth, to prevent that deplorable injustice: the debts incurred by his imprudent but generous and chivalrous prodigality paid with the money of his wife's lover! After those twenty-nine days Landri found himself once more, in the same place and at the same hour, surrounded by the same familiar objects amid which his period of arrest had passed. He was free now. On the preceding day he had been sentenced by the court-martial at Châlons, by five votes against two, to a fortnight's imprisonment, to date back to his original arrest. On his return from Châlons to Saint-Mihiel, he had found in his room an official communication, stating that "by presidential order, under date of this day, Lieutenant de Claviers-Grandchamp is retired from active service on half-pay." That sheet of paper was the veritable "Here lies" of the soldier, rather than the letter that he had received from the colonel on his return from the Hugueville expedition. Landri had crumpled it up and thrown it aside, paying no further heed to it. All his attention was given to a telegram which he read again and again, an indefinite number of times, seated, with his head in his hands, at the same table and in the same attitude as the marquis the other day, while his valet and the orderly went in and out, packing his trunks. Landri was to return to Paris by the night train. The telegram in which he was so absorbed was from M. de Claviers' maître d'hôtel. It was a reply to the only letter that he had written the marquis since their interview. He had sent it on the adjournment of the court-martial, to inform him of the verdict. It contained a careful but very distinct allusion to his proposed marriage, and stated that he proposed to go to Paris unless his "father"--he continued to call him by that name--should see any objection to his doing so. He read and reread the despatch acknowledging the receipt of that letter.