He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. He is
as good an arithmetician as Bareme, draws, dances, and sings well. The
devil's in it! what more do you want? If that is not a perfect
gentleman, find me a bourgeois who knows all this, or any man who
lives more nobly than he does. Does he do anything, I ask you? Does he
compromise his dignity by hanging about an office, bowing down before
the upstarts you call Directors-General? He walks upright. He is a
man.--However, I have just found in my waistcoat pocket the card he
gave me when he fancied I wanted to cut his throat, poor innocent.
Young men are very simple-minded nowadays! Here it is."
"Rue du Sentier, No. 5," said Monsieur de Fontaine, trying to recall
among all the information he had received, something which might
concern the stranger. "What the devil can it mean? Messrs. Palma,
Werbrust & Co., wholesale dealers in muslins, calicoes, and printed
cotton goods, live there.--Stay, I have it: Longueville the deputy has
an interest in their house. Well, but so far as I know, Longueville
has but one son of two-and-thirty, who is not at all like our man, and
to whom he gave fifty thousand francs a year that he might marry a
minister's daughter; he wants to be made a peer like the rest of 'em.
--I never heard him mention this Maximilien. Has he a daughter? What
is this girl Clara? Besides, it is open to any adventurer to call
himself Longueville.
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