rivaled the famous banquets by which the ministers of that time
secured the vote of their parliamentary recruits.

The Honorable Deputy was consequently pointed at as a most influential
corrupter of the legislative honesty of the illustrious Chamber that
was dying as it would seem of indigestion. A whimsical result! his
efforts to get his daughter married secured him a splendid popularity.
He perhaps found some covert advantage in selling his truffles twice
over. This accusation, started by certain mocking Liberals, who made
up by their flow of words for their small following in the Chamber,
was not a success. The Poitevin gentleman had always been so noble and
so honorable, that he was not once the object of those epigrams which
the malicious journalism of the day hurled at the three hundred votes
of the centre, at the Ministers, the cooks, the Directors-General, the
princely Amphitryons, and the official supporters of the Villele
Ministry.

At the close of this campaign, during which Monsieur de Fontaine had
on several occasions brought out all his forces, he believed that this
time the procession of suitors would not be a mere dissolving view in
his daughter's eyes; that it was time she should make up her mind. He
felt a certain inward satisfaction at having well fulfilled his duty
as a father. And having left no stone unturned, he hoped that, among
so many hearts laid at Emilie's feet, there might be one to which her
caprice might give a preference. Incapable of repeating such an
effort, and tired, too, of his daughter's conduct, one morning,
towards the end of Lent, when the business at the Chamber did not
demand his vote, he determined to ask what her views were. While his
valet was artistically decorating his bald yellow head with the delta
of powder which, with the hanging "ailes de pigeon," completed his