employing his friend, our friend de Trailles, in the high comedy of
politics. Maxime had looked high for his conquests; he had no
experience of untitled women; and at fifty years he felt that he had a
right to take a bite of the so-called wild fruit, much as a sportsman
will halt under a peasant's apple-tree. So the Count found a
reading-room for Mlle. Chocardelle, a rather smart little place to be
had cheap, as usual--"

"Pooh!" said Nathan. "She did not stay in it six months. She was too
handsome to keep a reading-room."

"Perhaps you are the father of her child?" suggested the lorette.

Desroches resumed.

"Since the firm bought up Maxime's debts, Cerizet's likeness to a
bailiff's officer grew more and more striking, and one morning after
seven fruitless attempts he succeeded in penetrating into the Count's
presence. Suzon, the old man-servant, albeit he was by no means in his
novitiate, at last mistook the visitor for a petitioner, come to
propose a thousand crowns if Maxime would obtain a license to sell
postage stamps for a young lady. Suzon, without the slightest
suspicion of the little scamp, a thoroughbred Paris street-boy into
whom prudence had been rubbed by repeated personal experience of the
police-courts, induced his master to receive him. Can you see the man
of business, with an uneasy eye, a bald forehead, and scarcely any
hair on his head, standing in his threadbare jacket and muddy boots--"

"What a picture of a Dun!" cried Lousteau.