“First of all, you give me carte-blanche, don’t you, Nabob? Carte-blanche, old fellow, and make that fat Hemerlingue burst with envy.”

Then the manager explained his scheme.  The festivities were to be divided into days, as at Vaux, when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV.  One day a play; another day Provencal games, dances, bull-fights, local bands; the third day—­And already the manager’s hand sketched programmes, announcements; while Bois l’Hery slept, his hands in his pockets, his chair tilted back, his cigar sunk in the corner of his sneering mouth; and the Marquis de Monpavon, always on his best behaviour, straightened his shirt-front to keep himself awake.

De Gery had left them early.  He had sought refuge beside the old mother—­who had known him as a boy, him and his brothers—­in the humble parlour of the brightly decorated, white-curtained house, where the Nabob’s mother tried to perpetuate her humble past with the help of a few relics saved from its wreck.

Paul chatted quietly with the fine old woman, admiring her severe and regular features, her white hair massed together like the hemp of her distaff, as she sat holding herself straight in her seat—­never in her life having leaned back or sat in an arm-chair—­a little green shawl folded tightly across her flat breast.  He called her Francoise, and she called him M. Paul.  They were old friends.  And guess what they talked about?  Of her grandchildren, of Bernard’s three sons, whom she did not know and so much longed to know.

“Ah, M. Paul, if you knew how I long to see them!  I should have been so happy if he had brought them, my three little ones, instead of these fine gentlemen.  Think, I have never seen them, only their portraits which are over there.  I am a little afraid of their mother, she is quite a great lady, a Miss Afchin.  But them, the children, I am sure they are not proud, and they would love their old granny.  It would be like having their father a little boy again, and I would give to them what I did not give to him.  You see, M. Paul, parents are not always just.  They have their favourites.  But God is just, he is.  The ones that are most petted and spoiled at the expense of the others, you should see what he does to them for you!  And the favour of the old often brings misfortune to the young!”

She sighed, looking towards the large recess from behind the curtains of which there came, at intervals, a long sobbing breath like the sleeping wail of a beaten child who has cried bitterly.

A heavy step on the staircase, a loud, sweet voice saying, very softly, “It is I; don’t move,” and Jansoulet appeared.  He knew his mother’s habits, how her lamp was the last to go out, so when every one in the castle was in bed, he came to see her, to chat with her for a little, to rejoice her heart with an affection he could not show before the others.  “Oh, stay, my dear Paul; we don’t mind you,” and once more a child in his mother’s