the dancing light that gilded his gray eyes, the smile that relaxed
his fine lips, puckering the corners of his mouth, the adorable
expression of that august face, whose native ugliness was redeemed by
the spirit of an apostle, you would understand the feeling which made
me answer the Cure of White Friars only with a kiss, as if he had been
my mother.

"'In Comte Octave you will find not a master, but a friend,' said my
uncle on the way to the Rue Payenne. 'But he is distrustful, or to be
more exact, he is cautious. The statesman's friendship can be won only
with time; for in spite of his deep insight and his habit of gauging
men, he was deceived by the man you are succeeding, and nearly became
a victim to his abuse of confidence. This is enough to guide you in
your behavior to him.'

"When we knocked at the enormous outer door of a house as large as the
Hotel Carnavalet, with a courtyard in front and a garden behind, the
sound rang as in a desert. While my uncle inquired of an old porter in
livery if the Count were at home, I cast my eyes, seeing everything at
once, over the courtyard where the cobblestones were hidden in the
grass, the blackened walls where little gardens were flourishing above
the decorations of the elegant architecture, and on the roof, as high
as that of the Tuileries. The balustrade of the upper balconies was
eaten away. Through a magnificent colonnade I could see a second court
on one side, where were the offices; the door was rotting. An old
coachman was there cleaning an old carriage. The indifferent air of
this servant allowed me to assume that the handsome stables, where of
old so many horses had whinnied, now sheltered two at most. The
handsome facade of the house seemed to me gloomy, like that of a
mansion belonging to the State or the Crown, and given up to some