In consenting, as he had done, to entrust Landri's education to a chance tutor, M. de Claviers had conformed once more to the classic type of the _Grand Seigneur_. One is amazed at the extraordinary facility with which, in all times, people who bear the greatest names abandon their children to uncertain influences. Even princes are no more painstaking in this respect. A youth upon whom the future of an empire depends will sometimes have been educated by a withered fruit of the University, comparable for refinement to the Regent's Dubois! Luckily for Landri, Chaffin still had, at that time, the habits of a father of a family, if not genuine virtues. Married and having children of his own, his guaranties of honorable conduct were real. But, as he had passed his fortieth year without succeeding in anything, he was already embittered and very near looking upon humble toilers of his own sort as social dupes. The atmosphere of great luxury, which he had entered thus without preparation, spoiled him. It was agreed that he should live with his pupil. This arrangement, separating him from his home and his former life, had made him helpless against his new environment. Thereupon Chaffin had undergone the secret, gradual process of corruption inevitably forced upon the poor plebeian, when he is essentially vulgar, by the discovery of the hidden immoralities of the nobly born and the wealthy. It is a genuine apprenticeship in depravity, is this official pessimism, compounded of secret envy and mean espionage. When the marquis--his son's education being completed--had offered him the post of secretary-manager, Chaffin was ripe for the rôle of intendant "after the old manner." M. de Claviers' expression is only too appropriate here. This appointment was for the châtelain of Grandchamp an heroic resolution: tired of the constant waste, he had determined to administer his fortune himself. That is generally the moment at which, with persons of his rank, the final ruin begins. After three months the so-called secretary settled the accounts alone, and before the end of the first year the peculations had begun. They had multiplied from settling-day to settling-day, to reach their climax in the detestable conspiracy already mentioned, which a group of usurious dealers in curios was about to execute upon the treasures of Grandchamp, with his assistance.