shared the plunder with the Committee of Public Salvation, as that
sort of person always did. I recollect the steward telling my
grandmother that she might live at Grandvilliers in complete security,
because her corn was as good as a certificate of civism. Well, then,
this Loriot, who sold corn to those butchers, has never had but one
passion, they say--he idolizes his daughters. He settled one of them
under Restaud's roof, and grafted the other into the Nucingen family
tree, the Baron de Nucingen being a rich banker who had turned
Royalist. You can quite understand that so long as Bonaparte was
Emperor, the two sons-in-law could manage to put up with the old
Ninety-three; but after the restoration of the Bourbons, M. de Restaud
felt bored by the old man's society, and the banker was still more
tired of it. His daughters were still fond of him; they wanted 'to
keep the goat and the cabbage,' so they used to see Joriot whenever
there was no one there, under pretence of affection. 'Come to-day,
papa, we shall have you all to ourselves, and that will be much
nicer!' and all that sort of thing. As for me, dear, I believe that
love has second-sight: poor Ninety-three; his heart must have bled. He
saw that his daughters were ashamed of him, that if they loved their
husbands his visits must make mischief. So he immolated himself. He
made the sacrifice because he was a father; he went into voluntary
exile. His daughters were satisfied, so he thought that he had done
the best thing he could; but it was a family crime, and father and
daughters were accomplices. You see this sort of thing everywhere.
What could this old Doriot have been but a splash of mud in his
daughters' drawing-rooms? He would only have been in the way, and
bored other people, besides being bored himself. And this that
happened between father and daughters may happen to the prettiest
woman in Paris and the man she loves the best; if her love grows
tiresome, he will go; he will descend to the basest trickery to leave