[Footnote 1: "Being bound simply to observe here that it is folly to think that any of our kings ever bore frogs. On the contrary, what has been written to that effect came from the enemies of French honor, and in derision of the fact that they are descended from the Paluds meotides."] [Footnote 2: Within these shady woods and forests Are wild boars and shy, timid hinds, And shoats, and young of hinds and does, And antlered stags, to woodsmen known; In brief, all pleasure, solace and delight That huntsman may in woodland fair enjoy.] [Footnote 3: There is but one honor, there are many mistresses.] III THE TRAGIC UNDERSIDE OF A GRAND EXISTENCE "Nothing in the château shall be touched!" repeated Chaffin half an hour later. He was climbing the grand staircase on his way to the apartment that Landri occupied when he came to Grandchamp,--the apartment of the eldest son. It was twelve years already since the last-born, become the only son, had been installed therein.--"Everything shall be touched, monsieur le marquis!" And the disloyal steward's face expressed the hatred that wicked servants feel for their betrayed masters while he looked at the Beauvais panels on the walls, one of the glories of the château, the complete set of tapestries representing Chinese scenes after Fontenay, Vernensaal and Dumont. Princes, in rich Asiatic costumes, were seated on Persian carpets. Princesses, arrayed in white stuffs embellished with precious stones, rode in palanquins. Servants carried parasols. Negro boys offered fruits under canopies enwreathed with foliage. It was long, long ago that Chaffin had first climbed those stairs and marvelled, with the stupefaction of a petty bourgeois suddenly transported into a scene of fashionable life, at all that magnificence befitting the "Thousand and One Nights!" He was then a poor professor, unattached, married, with a family of children. He had just been introduced into the château by the chaplain, as tutor to the youngest son. The priest, who had educated the older sons, was too old to undertake another task of the sort. He dreaded the presence of another ecclesiastic. Being instructed by the marquis to find some one, he remembered an instructor whom he had met in a religious boarding-school in Paris. He, on being appealed to, suggested his colleague Chaffin.