Alfred Boyer felt very happy that afternoon over the printer's proofs that the mail had just brought him. He could not take his eyes off the page containing the title: "Mémoires du Maréchal Frédet Prince d'Augsbourg, Duc d'Ivrea, with notes and introduction by Alfred Boyer, former student of the École de Chartres." The work to which he had devoted himself during the last two years was nearing completion. His name was going to be associated for ever with that of "Catinat of the Grande Armée," who had begun as volunteer in 1792, and had died of a broken heart after Waterloo. Need one recall Frédet's heroism in the wars in the North—then too, in the first campaign in Italy, just under the walls of Ivrea, and his brilliant services in Egypt and Germany; how after Ulm, he had surrounded and taken prisoner ten thousand of the enemy at the gates of Augsbourg, with a handful of hussars? Austerlitz, Iéna, Eylau, Wagram, and Spain in turn saw this indefatigable soldier maneuvre his troops with the skill to which the "Mémoires" bore testimony. "I sent Frédet to Catalonia," said the Emperor, "with twenty thousand men. It was like sending fifty thousand. He alone made up the difference." A very severe wound prevented his joining Napoleon in Russia, he achieved wonders at Dresden, though scarcely reestablished in health, and at Leipzig, where he saved the retreat by checking during several hours, the main body of the Austrian cavalry. Like Ney, and like the Emperor himself, he was one of those who sought death at Waterloo, and whom death would not accept, in spite of prodigies of valor, exalted almost to madness by the despair of the defeat. When peace was concluded, the veteran shut himself up at Combronde, near Riom, on a small estate that he had acquired in Auvergne, where he had been born. It was there where he commenced to write or rather to dictate his mémoires in a haphazard fashion, following his exalted fancy, accumulating a pile of rather incoherent notes, which had slept in their portfolios for eighty years—from 1821, at which date the old soldier died, until 1900 when his grandson, the present Prince of Augsbourg, had at last decided to publish those papers, a little influenced, it must be admitted, by his need of money. Having a scanty fortune and a very large family—five marriageable daughters—he had been tempted by the success of "Marbot's Mémoires." He summoned from Paris to his little Château of Combes, where the meagreness of his income and his misanthropy kept him prisoner the year round, a young man who was to put in order that mass of documents mostly without shape. That is how Alfred Boyer found himself with a task that developed into a passion. Whatever may be the political value accorded to the Napoleonic legend, its heroic character casts a magic spell that few historians of that fantastic epoch have been able to overthrow. That magic spell had acted so much the more on the young compiler, because the moral figure of Frédet was fully in accord with his military bearing. Among the portraits of those marshals, all equally brilliant, but not equally attractive, his was one of the most pure and exalted. The heroism of the Prince of Augsbourg retained to the last that antique charm that one imagines would have adorned Desaix had he lived long enough. It seems that Frédet never had any ambition for these dignities which his master delighted to shower upon him. When did he have a chance to enjoy them? Bonaparte, who knew men and their value, never ceased for a moment to keep him employed, in peace as well as in war. When he was not fighting, Frédet was an administrator. His proverbial integrity, his gentleness, and—a quality extremely rare in that army sprung from the Revolution—his religious fervor, gave to his countenance the look of a paladin. While he lived it was impossible to come in contact with him without loving him. He disarmed the envy of Marmont, the sour humor of Soult, and warmed the coldness of Macdonald. The writings of these three rivals in glory, give ample proof of it. Dead, his rare personality had just performed a similar miracle of seduction in his memorialist, who gazed as if hypnotized at the first page of the mémoires, and the bulky package of proofs. At that very minute he was living over again the two years of his arduous labor. He saw himself once more, after his thesis had been approved, hesitating between accepting a poorly paid post as librarian in an obscure corner of some province, and the offer that one of his professors had made him, to work on the mémoires of the famous marshal. It was food and lodging assured for some time, a means of becoming known, and of laying aside a few thousand francs with which he could support himself until he could obtain appointment to some good post. Beyond this, Boyer did not know anything about the soldier whose papers he had to classify. In that old house at Combes, which had remained unchanged during three-quarters of a century, he had commenced to give himself up to that retrospective semi-hallucination known only to those who have a scholarly disposition. Taine has pictured it in that eloquent page, where he describes himself at the archives, following over the yellowed paper the old writings of the men of the Revolution. "I was," he says, "tempted to speak aloud to them." In that poor mansion where the old hero had sheltered himself in his last few days, the walls were covered with relics of his glorious adventures, brought together in confusion; here, swords of honor hung on the wall, next to them some engravings representing feats of arms; there, portraits of the marshal himself, the first Consul, the Emperor, Frédet's chosen companions, among others that of Ney, who had been one of the witnesses to his marriage. Frédet's wife was there, frail and delicate in her rich costume of a court lady, painted by Gérard, in an attitude identical with that of the Duchess of Rovigo, on the edge of a park leaning on a small column ornamented with helmets and cuirasses in high relief. She had survived her husband forty years, and to her piety was due the preservation of the home to which the eldest son of the family had not returned until 1875, after having served in the army and resigned while simple lieutenant-colonel, when another had—unjustly as he maintained—been promoted over him. His carelessness produced at least this advantage, that the species of family museum brought together through the sorrow of the grandmother had remained undisturbed. In the mean while, that is to say, under the monarchy of July and the Second Empire, the Frédets had lived in Paris; the second Prince of Augsbourg as a peer of France, and then as Senator; the third, the present Prince, as an officer of the staff of Napoleon the Third. Physically the colonel was the living image of his illustrious grandfather. He had the leonine face, the calm and powerful mien, the grave eyes, the serious mouth, and also the athlete's muscles, broad shoulders and powerful neck. There the resemblance stopped. Was it lack of education or opportunity? Did he take morally after some ancestor on the mother's side? His father had married a girl of noble birth, but of that country nobility with whom hunting is the sole hereditary occupation. In his old age it was the only pleasure that seemed to survive in this heir to an illustrious name, the first ambition of a disappointed career. Alfred Boyer recalled his strange impression during the first weeks of his sojourn when he saw the Prince start out in the early morning, with his gamekeeper and his dogs and not return until nightfall, covered with dust or mud, sunburned or else soaked in rain, according to the weather, his gun on his shoulder, and his game bag bulging with the pheasants hunted during the day. To his five daughters, left at home under the charge of an old aunt, who managed the household for him, this taciturn hunter seemed to give no thought. They were pretty and refined girls, and if the memorialist had not been a poor pale-faced student, his presence in this isolation with these five young unmarried girls might not have been without danger. But Alfred belonged to that class of timid, intellectual men who have no need of disenchanting experiences to put in practise the advice the fair Venetian gave so amusingly to Rousseau: "Avoid women and study mathematics." Being of a sickly nature, knowing himself awkward and homely, he had early turned into intellectual channels the feverish ardor that young men of his age usually spend in sentimental adventures. His only pleasures were the discoveries of unpublished texts, of ingenious hypotheses on obscure historical points, and the patient conquest of a chair in the Institute by force of erudite publications. The marshal's papers fell in well with this program, and with something more—the poetry of the extraordinary imperial exploit incarnate in one of the most magnificent workers. Thus it was that after having engaged in the work as compiler of records, Alfred Boyer continued as enthusiast, identifying himself with his hero in each episode of his brilliant career, collating the smallest anecdotes about him, claiming for him the first place in all the events in which he had taken part, putting himself at infinite pains to make this great man greater still; possessed by one of those retrospective idolatries at which we can not smile, so disinterested and pathetic are they when their object is a name sunk in misfortune and oblivion, like that of this soldier who had died of the defeat of his master and of France. What a work it was to decipher the piles of notes and documents he had left, to make selection from among the texts, to complete them with commentaries! But those "Mémoires" were at last to appear, all the traits of that noble figure were to shine out in a brilliant light, and the author of this posthumous justice could not gaze enough on the printed characters that would soon shine forth in the cover of the first volume—the complete work would be in four volumes—in the booksellers' shop windows.... The sound of a door opening roused Boyer from his "semihypnotic"[14] trance. He raised his head and sprang suddenly to his feet. It was the Prince of Augsbourg who had just entered the library. Those visits, rare at first, had become more frequent as Alfred Boyer's work advanced. Not that the sportsman had ever ventured to give any advice to the memorialist, who had read to him some of the pages dictated or written by his grandfather—those, more frequently, in which the marshal told of the departure from his paternal roof (he was the son of a physician at Combronde), to join the army—the story of the first battle in which he had taken part, at Hondschoote—that of his last, and his farewell to the Emperor before the charge at Waterloo. The manner in which he listened to those recitals, his head in his hands, never uttering a word, revealed an intense feeling in the hero's descendant. Evidently an almost religious cult for his ancestor burned in this obscure and wild nature, which Alfred Boyer pitied without quite comprehending. He could see that, overburdened by the weight of a great name, ruined by his father, discontented with his present circumstances, and knowing his inability to alter them, the colonel had fallen into that lethargy of the will in which for some years he had simply vegetated. He had given up the society of his set, as well as his profession, turning countryman, and since his wife's death had not paid any attention to the small details in personal appearance that, even in the most ordinary surroundings, reveal the man who has been used to good company. It was evident that he loved his daughters, as proved by the sadness with which his eyes would sometimes rest on these pretty children, doomed by their portionless condition to some obscure marriage in that corner of Auvergne. The remnants of his fortune yielded an income of about thirty thousand francs a year. Was that enough to sustain the rank of a prince? The colonel had said to himself that decadence would be better borne in the solitude of this house peopled with the memories of his grandfather. Thus he had reasoned. Or at least that was the solution that Alfred Boyer had found in his mind to the enigma presented by that character; and his own constantly increasing cult for the marshal made him sympathize with the homage rendered by abdication to that ruinous heritage. The grandson felt the glory of the grandfather. That was enough to make the enthusiastic compiler of the "Mémoires" feel himself in sympathy with his taciturn patron, and on this occasion he felt keen pleasure at seeing him enter the library. He would show him the proofs just arrived by the courier. He welcomed the newcomer, and, handing to him the proofs, he said: "I was just going to ask you to receive me, Prince. Our first volume is printed." "I do not understand much about these things," replied the Prince of Augsbourg, after having glanced at the bundle of proofs, "but all this seems to me very good." He glanced through them again more slowly, stopping at certain passages that he recognized, and, a detail that Alfred was surprised to note, his face grew visibly more sombre. This made his resemblance to his grandfather much more striking. One would have said that to hold in his hand this book, which was, in a measure, his production since he had kept the memorialist at work at his own expense during the past two years, was more than painful to him. At last he returned the sheets to the young man, saying: "Yes, that is very good—but perhaps you will have to add some notes to it. Yes," he continued after a moment's hesitation, "I received a letter this morning informing me that certain documents will be placed at my disposal. I shall have to go to Paris to fetch them. I have come to ask you to accompany me—Thanks," he went on as Alfred Boyer nodded assent, "I did not doubt that you would be willing to come—" He hesitated again, then with an effort he added: "Doubtless you have heard something about the Duchesse d'Ivrea." "The Duchesse d'Ivrea?" repeated the young man. "I thought that title was one of those belonging to the Princess of Augsbourg." "It is borne by the widow of my younger brother," interrupted the colonel, who added in a singular tone: "You are right. All the titles of the family should belong to the eldest, but my uncle was formerly called the Duc d'Ivrea, and my brother naturally took the same title. I am surprised at your not knowing this, after having been busy with the marshal, as you have, for almost twenty months. It is true," and a bitter smile curled his lips, "that, compared with him, we are scarcely interesting. And then my brother and I had not visited each other, and I do not know his wife. That is why I never mentioned her to you. She is very ill, she informs me—given up by her physicians, in fact. She wishes to deliver into my hands some family papers left in her keeping by my brother. I can rely on you, then. The most interesting part of them is a correspondence with Moreau during the latter's sojourn in America. You know that the marshal made a campaign with him in Holland. He foresaw his failure and wished to prevent it. These letters were offered for sale some years ago. They got them away from me because they were wealthier than I, but now they wish to return them to me, and it is right that they should. We should find a place for them in the second volume. That will mean a great deal of revising, but it is worth the trouble. I shall leave you now, as I have many orders to attend to. We shall start this evening." ... While making his preparations after this interview, Alfred Boyer could not shake off an impression, that, vague as it was and without foundation, seemed to him a certainty. This visit to his sister-in-law was costing the Prince very dear. There was a mystery in their relations, and a very painful one. Whence came this rupture, and what were its causes, so profound that not the slightest mention of a Duchess d'Ivrea had ever been made either by the Prince or by any of his five daughters? Not one of them bore this name; they were called simply the Frédets of Augsbourg. What had happened between the two brothers? Had this rupture preceded the marriage? Or had that event been the cause of it? All these questions presented themselves to the young man's mind without his having the faintest inkling as to their solution. During the long months of his sojourn he had not established relations with any one among the few country families in the neighborhood of Combes. Moreover, he would have considered himself unworthy of the confidence that his patron had shown him from the very first, opening his archives to him, letting him live in complete intimacy with his household, if he had made any inquiries about the Frédets. From the moment that there was a question of some family secret, to start a conversation on this subject with the old relative who acted as housekeeper would have been as impossible as to try and make one of the young girls talk about it. He knew no more of the affair when the day after the conversation the Prince and he arrived in Paris than he did on the preceding evening. During the journey he had noted the increasing preoccupation of his companion, who, when they reached the station, said to him: "I do not know as yet where we shall put up. Let us take a cab and we will stop at some lodging-house. I used to know a place in the Rue de Bourgogne, in the neighborhood of the Chamber of Deputies. We will be near the Rue de Grenelle, where our business is. The d'Ivrea house is the same that the marshal lived in under the Empire." "Next door to the house of the Duc de Feltré?" returned Alfred Boyer. "It was only three days ago that I was transcribing the page on which he relates their meeting on the sidewalk in front of their houses on his return from Waterloo, and his refusal to return the Duc's salutation. How finely the passage concludes: 'Perhaps it was not just,' he writes, 'but at that time every French officer who had not fought at Waterloo filled me with horror. I should add that if the Duc de Feltré deserted us, at least it was not, as in so many other cases, for money. He was my friend, and I attest that I have always known him to be an upright man with clean hands.' "Upright and with clean hands," repeated the Prince. "Yes, those were his words; I recall them, too. That might have been his own device, do you not think so? My brother repurchased the house," he added after a pause. "I do not know how they have furnished it, but the façade should not be changed. It is of the seventeenth century and has the grand style of that period. You shall judge of it yourself this afternoon, for I do not intend to remain here long. I count upon going to the d'Ivrea house in this same cab as soon as we have engaged our apartment in the Rue Bourgogne. You will not leave me—I am not paying a visit to a relative. I have come here to obtain some papers that belong to me by right as the senior. You have been good enough to engage your services as historian for our family until the end of the publication of the 'Mémoires.' Your place, then, is with me." They had taken their places in the carriage while the ex-colonel was thus formulating the program of a proceeding made the more mysterious by these words, and by the irrevocable determination that they indicated. During the three-quarters of an hour that it took them to reach the Rue de Bourgogne, where the lodging-house stood, and then the Rue de Grenelle, they were silent, the Prince absorbed in his thoughts, and the young man out of respect for a sadness of which he divined the cause, without being able to determine its precise nature. The sadness was changed into an actual contraction of pain when the carriage stopped in front of a high porte-cochère, above which could be read this inscription, recently restored, as the brilliancy of the lettering indicated: "Hôtel d'Ivrea." Alfred alighted first and waited before the open door, ready to assist the Prince out of the carriage. The latter did not move. This last effort was almost intolerable to him. "I thought at first I should send you in my place, my dear Boyer," he said, finally deciding to alight, "but she would not receive you. It is me that she wishes to see. She has adopted the only way, my veneration for the marshal. Let us go in—but it is so hard!" Never in all those weeks that they had lived almost constantly together had he uttered such intimate sentiments to his companion. His irritation, which he scarcely gave himself the trouble to conceal, increased still more as they crossed the court at the back of which rose the beautiful gray façade he had spoken of, with its high windows and its ample mansard roof pierced with bull's-eyes. Though Alfred Boyer was much moved by the family tragedy, of which the Prince's attitude was an index, he could not but admire the noble aspect of the structure in which the heroic Frédet had thought to find rest. But if the exterior of the ancient house harmonized with the legend of the hero, the interior offered a no less striking contrast to it. The extraordinary excess of gaudy upholstery, the multiplicity of trifling ornaments, and the total absence of real works of art, the petty coquetry of the curtains, everything from the very entrance stairs and the vestibule gave an impression of false luxury and cheap imitation. The walls and ceiling of the salon into which the two men were shown were draped with blue satin, the assorted portières were held up by silver-fringed curtain rings; double curtains of heavy silk and lace veiled the windows. The sumptuous upholstering of the furniture utterly lacking in taste, the overladen garnishment of the mantel capped the climax, and made of this sumptuous apartment an almost questionable place. It fairly reeked with orders from the fashionable draper, of bank bills, and nothing showed personal taste. The abundance of coronets scattered everywhere proclaimed the parvenu. That the woman who ordered such furnishings for the austere mansion should be the Duchesse d'Ivrea was one of those paradoxes of fate that amuse only the unthinking. When one has such a passionate adoration for a hero as the compiler of the "Mémoires" had for the Duc d'Ivrea, such antitheses seemed to be a profanation. Alfred was not surprised, then, at the visible repugnance shown in the face of the actual bearer of the name and arms of the Frédets during the few moments passed in the salon while they were waiting to be presented. The Prince had sent word by the servant that he was there with the gentleman who had charge of the publication of the marshal's papers. As if turning his back on this cheap luxury, he had gone and leaned against the window, from which his rude hand had roughly pushed aside the flimsy curtains. He looked out on a narrow garden to which the first shoots of spring were already giving a touch of green, and which was vulgarized by a Japanese kiosk with colored windows. When the servant returned to the room, Alfred could see that the eyes of the sturdy hunter were suffused with tears. "Well?" he demanded almost imperiously. "Madame la Duchesse is awaiting Monsieur le Prince," was the reply, "but alone; she is too ill this morning to receive two visitors."—"What did I tell you, Boyer!" exclaimed the Prince, not caring whether or not he was heard by the footman. "She wants me to come to pay her a visit, but I have not come with any such intention, and I will not have it so. I came with you to obtain the papers. Let her receive you or not in her bedroom, that is of no importance. You are none the less here in the house, and officially. Wait for me here then. It will not be long." Ten minutes later the irascible nobleman appeared again, holding in his hand a large sealed envelope, which he displayed, saying: "It is the first restitution, and the most important for us: the correspondence with Moreau." And when they were again in the carriage, rolling toward the Rue Bourgogne: "I must do her this justice," he continued, without giving his sister-in-law her title, "she was quite correct. I found her in bed. I had never seen her, as I have already told you. She has the reputation of having been very beautiful, and she must have been. Though she is worn by sickness, she still has fine features and astonishing eyes. She is dying of cancer of the liver. She knows it; she told me of it. She returned these papers to me very simply, saying that on my next visit she would give me other documents, which she says she must arrange. I am not her dupe; they are all arranged. She wants to prove—though I have not the slightest idea to whom—that the Frédet family recognizes her since the Prince of Augsbourg goes to her house. But the matter is done with. I have the packet necessary for our work. We can start back again for Combes with our booty this evening or to-morrow, and though it is to be regretted that some parts of it are lacking, still they are mere trifles. But let us assure ourselves that we have not been cheated. "There were thirty-seven letters, according to the catalog of the sale at which they bought them. Good, here we are! we can go upstairs and make sure that the number is correct. Will you take charge of the matter and count them carefully? Thirty-seven—" When they were both in the apartment, consisting of two little communicating bedrooms, that had been reserved for them, Alfred Boyer's first action was to open the envelope, which was fastened with a seal bearing the escutcheon and device of the Frédets. His historian's heart beat high as he saw that it was not merely a matter of simple notes, but of long letters, some of which covered ten or a dozen pages. He began to count them, drawing them out of the envelope one by one. He was unfolding the fifteenth when he noticed a smaller envelope, that had been slipped into it. He took it out and read the direction: "For the Prince of Augsbourg." The envelope had not been sealed. He opened it mechanically, thinking that it had some connection with the correspondence. In it was a sheet of paper, again with the crest of the Frédets, on which he read with that swift look that takes in ten lines at a glance: "This is my will, which annuls all preceding ones. I constitute as my sole legatee Monsieur Jules Frédet, Prince d'Augsbourg, under the express condition that he shall personally conduct my funeral, that he shall have my body as well as that of my husband deposited in the tomb of the Frédet family, and that I appear as donor of the letters to General Moreau in the forthcoming 'Mémoires' of the marshal. If Monsieur Jules Frédet does not accept this legacy, my will deposited at my notary's shall be valid in place of this. Given under my hand"—here followed a date and beneath it the signature: "Duchesse d'Ivrea." "Is the count correct?" This question, snapped out by the Prince through the open door from the end of the other room where he had gone to dress, startled the young man. Surely he was quite innocent of all design, and he had no sooner discovered the confidential nature of the paper than he replaced it in its envelope. Nevertheless he had discovered its contents, and it was with cheeks flaming like those of a guilty man that he replied: "I do not know yet, but I have just found this in the correspondence." He had on the tip of his tongue the avowal of his involuntary indiscretion, but false shame restrained him. "An envelope?" said the Prince. "Addressed to me? It must be some trick she has devised to get a letter to me. If it is a letter I shall tear it up without reading it. Let me see"—he had advanced to the door of the room and began reading aloud: "This is my—

 He stopped short. He had turned terribly pale. Alfred saw that his hand clenched over the sheet as if to crush and tear it. Then, folding the paper, he returned it to its envelope and placed it on the mantel under a book, as if it were of no importance. He came back to the door and looked at Alfred, who was already bent over his work, prudently avoiding this look. He seemed to have a question on his lips that he did not put into words. He had stopped while shaving to call out his question. Without saying anything more he finished shaving while Boyer continued to arrange the letters with hands trembling with emotion, and the same emotion shook his voice as he said, finally breaking the silence, when the work was done:

"The thirty-seven letters are here."

"They are all here, eh?" replied the Prince. He was so upset that he did not notice the young man's embarrassment. "You need not begin to examine them until to-morrow morning," he continued. "I give you leave of absence for this afternoon. You have not been in Paris for a long time, and you may have some friends that you wish to look up here. You are at liberty for the rest of the day, but come back at about six o'clock to see if I need you."

He had scarcely reached the sidewalk of the Rue de Bourgogne, when the young man felt so strongly the pangs of remorse at not having confessed his indiscretion that he stood still for several minutes, asking himself whether he should not at once go upstairs and tell the Prince that he had read the will. At the same time he saw that, once in the Prince's presence, it would again be impossible for him to confess.

Not that he feared reproaches for the act itself; he had only done as he had been directed in ascertaining the contents of the envelope, which, moreover, was open. His silence afterward was easily explained by timidity. What now made the avowal so painful was the knowledge that he had surprised the grandson of his hero in a moment of mental anguish. The manner in which the Prince had spoken of his sister-in-law, his attitude at the d'Ivrea house, his gesture when he had taken up the envelope, his first words, then the contraction of his hand over the paper—all these indications combined to reveal an aversion which could not arise from a mere family disagreement, such as is ordinarily dissolved by death, but from a most intense, a most violent contempt. The silence concerning her maintained by the family proved that the aversion was not personal. Why? For what reason had all the elder branch taken such a stand against the marriage of the head of the younger branch? Alfred could no longer doubt that the Duchesse d'Ivrea knew the disposition of her relatives toward her. The method she had adopted to send her will to her brother-in-law sufficiently proved that.

Then why did she make this will? Why should she leave this fortune unreservedly to relatives for whom she ought to have a hatred equal to their own?

Suddenly the terms of this will that he had scarcely looked at—but how could he ever forget its smallest detail?—recurred to the young man's mind. The funeral, conducted officially by the Prince, the place in the family tomb at Père-Lachaise, the name in the "Mémoires" of the marshal—it would be to acknowledge the relationship and the marriage with the Duc d'Ivrea, giving a formal revocation to an ostracism that, doubtless, had lasted many years and exasperated her womanly pride. The Duchess had placed the bargain entirely in the Prince's hands. The figure of the latter actually holding in his hands the paper that formulated this bargain arose before Alfred's mind with the clearness of a perfect image, and again he saw the conflict of the three emotions which his face had expressed: astonishment, anger, hesitation.

The Prince had hesitated. He hesitated still. Alfred, who had gone a few steps in the direction of the Bourbon Palace, stopped a second time to turn back to his lodgings. For a long time his eyes were fastened on the windows of the second floor, behind which a drama of conscience was being enacted of which he would soon know all the details. As yet he could only see facts that were of too doubtful a significance to enable him to form an opinion. "After all," said he, shrugging his shoulders, "it is none of my business. It is for the Prince to decide whether the motives of his antipathy toward his sister-in-law are stronger than his desire to become rich. The episode is worth my little trip to Paris; let us profit by it."

Ever since the now distant time when he had exiled himself in Auvergne until his work should have been finished, in order not to draw upon his savings, he had let slip the bonds of friendship that had united him to many of his comrades in the École de Chartres. Having no parents to visit, he began to think of them, moved thereto, perhaps, by a last remark of his patron. All at once a face and a name stood out in his memory with singular distinctness. Was it not in this very quarter where he now was, in the Rue de l'Université, that one of his most charming classmates lived, Raymond de Contay? He was a young man of high birth, grandson to the famous Duchesse de Contay, who was so well known for her unbounded charity. After making an excellent record as student in the same college with Alfred, and having no desire to be an idler, he had enrolled himself in the École de Chartres. His intention had been to devote himself to historical work.

If Alfred had probed his own motives he would have recognized the fact that the sympathy he had formerly felt for this clever and pleasing youth was not the real cause of the temptation that led him irresistibly to go to his house this very morning in spite of the unusual hour. It was nearly noon. "I hope I will find him." A thought that was not inspired merely by a friendly feeling. The real cause was that Raymond belonged to the most select class. To Alfred, who had no idea of the air-tight partitions that divide the different circles of the various nobilities, this meant that his comrade certainly knew the Duchesse d'Ivrea, or had heard her spoken of by people who knew her. If any one could give him exact information about her it was Contay, and Alfred Boyer felt that he must have this information.

He hungered and thirsted for it, as much as if, instead of being the simple posthumous secretary to the marshal Prince of Augsbourg, the blood of this hero coursed in his own veins, and he had a right to know who bore this title of d'Ivrea, won at the cannon's mouth on the battlefield. Besides, the will stipulated that the Duchess should figure in the "Mémoires" as the donor of the letters to Moreau, and was not his own honor involved in these "Mémoires"? Had he not devoted two precious years of his youth to them? Was he not ready to devote a third, with this recompense as his supreme ambition, that his name as a poor scribbler should one day be linked forever with that of the mighty warrior of the "Grande Armée"? What if this woman, however, who bought a place in the book with the gift of her fortune, had made herself unworthy of the honor by some infamous action? Was such a thing possible? No. The master of Combes professed such a passionate reverence for his grandfather!

That her name should be cited in the "Mémoires," that the Prince should conduct the funeral, that she should be given a place in the tomb of the Frédets—never would he admit it, even for a moment, and even at the price of millions, that these three things could be granted to a person unworthy.

But the Prince had not destroyed the will—then he must have seen some possibility of conforming to it! Yet his sadness and disgust, the tone of voice in which he had spoken of her, as he put it, his first movement, his subsequent silence—how were all these contradictory indications to be reconciled? Alfred hastened his steps toward the sole chance of learning the whole truth with a feverish impatience that amounted almost to pain....

Raymond de Contay was at home getting ready to go out to lunch. This was a relief to Boyer, who in his embarrassment suddenly feared that it would look as if he had come, thus early, in order to be asked to stay for luncheon. But his classmate's welcome was so cordial that he had no scruples about suggesting that he should walk with him. As he ascended Raymond's stairs he felt an almost painful apprehension over the means he should employ in his quest. The pretext was furnished to him by his friend, who, not content with asking him about his work, wished to know how he had got along at Combes. Boyer took occasion to sketch in a few words the characters of the Prince, his five daughters, and the maiden aunt. With a lump in his throat at the thought of what he might be about to learn he continued: "This is all I have seen of the family. But there is another branch, the younger, now represented by the Duchesse d'Ivrea"—he looked for a sign of intelligence in his friend's face. "Who is she?"—"The Duchesse d'Ivrea," replied Raymond. "I do not know her."

"But she belongs to your world," said Alfred naively; then giving way to the morbid curiosity that had been goading him on ever since he had read the will, he added: "You surely must know some people who know her. I can not explain the matter to you, but I have a strong interest in knowing why she is at odds with her relatives. The matter concerns the entire future of my work, perhaps. In fact, I ask you as a great service—understand me, a very great service indeed—to try to find out about her for me."

He spoke in so serious a tone, his face expressed so much anxiety, that Raymond was deeply impressed. He thought that probably these "Mémoires of Frédet" had started one of those disagreements between relatives that sometimes prevent for many years the publication of books of this sort.

"If you are so bent upon it," replied his comrade, "I shall try to find out. I am lunching to-day with one of my cousins, who belongs to all the clubs and has Paris at his fingers' ends. If your Duchesse d'Ivrea broke with her family for any reasons that have been talked about, my cousin will know them. I will drop you a line about it this evening, but I do not promise you success. In any event, give me your address."

Although this chance of seeing a little more clearly into the relations that existed between the celebrated marshal's heirs was very dubious, it was a chance, and for the time being the prospect calmed the agitation into which the morning's episode had thrown Boyer. He had a few errands to do relative to his work. He attended to them all carefully, and about six o'clock he found himself at the door of his lodgings in the Rue de Bourgogne. He asked if his patron were in. On the concièrge's reply that the Prince had not gone out during the afternoon, Alfred was again seized with the feverish curiosity of the morning.

Raymond had left no letter for him, from which he concluded that the inquiry of the cousin had been useless, and he ascended the stairs a prey to an uneasiness that reached a climax when he found himself face to face with the Prince. Evidently the unhappy man was at the end of his mental resources. He paced to and fro from one extremity to the other of the two narrow chambers like a wild beast in a cage. The luncheon that he had ordered had not been touched and was still on the table, and at the first glance Alfred could see that the envelope that contained the will had not been moved from its place. It still rested under the book on the marble mantel. It had been beyond the Prince's strength even to touch it. Alas, the temptation had begun to work in him. Alfred had proof of it immediately in the words that were addressed to him as soon as he appeared.

"I have had news from the Rue de Grenelle," said the Prince. "It seems that she has had a severe attack since we left her, and almost succumbed to it. The doctor is not sure that she will live through the day. You see, we did well to come when we did for the letters to Moreau. Apropos of these letters, perhaps it would be well to publish them separately. We will talk it over. What I have been having a day-dream about is a library made up of works concerning the men of the First Empire who had relations with the Prince, all his papers well classified, and all his memoirs, and all of this installed in the d'Ivrea house where we were this morning. I can see the house now, stripped of the tawdry gewgaws that spoil it, and restored to the exact condition in which it was in the marshal's time. It would be very easy—we have the inventories at Combes. I would like to make it a museum to the glory of the "Grande Armée," with rooms consecrated to all the companions in arms whom he loved—a Ney room, a Masséna room, a Davoust room, a Macdonald room—what do you say to this project, my dear Boyer, with you as perpetual curator at some small emolument? Do not say no to it; you deserve the place. Do you imagine that I do not know the difference between purely mercenary work and that which you have devoted to the "Mémoires"? But your devotion shall not be lost. It is a pity that you could not be in Paris with your time your own, all your time, to devote to some great historical work. You shall have it. It is also a pity—do you not think so?—that so many objects of interest in the history of the Empire should be hidden away at Combes and that no one should know them? The portraits, for instance; they must be brought here; they must be—and it is the same with my daughters. I wish them to be here; I wish them to be married—well and happily married." For a long time he continued in this vein without any response from the young man. The Prince busied himself with the future employment of the fortune that had suddenly fallen into his possession, putting almost a kind of fever into his projects. He reveled in anticipatory visions of the noble end to which he would devote his wealth—always provided he accepted it, for his ardor in justifying the acceptance in advance clearly proved that he had not yet decided, as did also the painful hesitation in his voice, in his gestures, in the sound of his footsteps on the floor, and still more in his obstinacy in not returning to the house of his dying sister-in-law. Against what idea was he struggling so violently? Against what apprehension of remorse? Why did this flood of imaginative confidences—since there was no question yet but of possibilities—roll forth while the real confidence, that which concerned the will, never appeared?

Alfred saw the whiteness of the envelope standing out against the gray on the marble mantel, and as he listened his heart became more oppressed with each new phrase, for each was a fresh sign that the Prince considered the acceptance of the conditions contained in that envelope as an indelicacy, worse than that, as a crime. A crime? Against whom? Against whom, if not against this ancestor? What image obsessed him, passing and repassing in all these words? that of the marshal. It was as if by making promises to that great figure he wished to disarm the anger of its shade, to expiate in advance an outrage on its memory that he was about to commit, that he had already committed in not at once spurning a certain offer.

How long might this strange monologue have continued, in which the grandson of the illustrious soldier concealed the fever of a terrible indecision by thinking aloud before a witness whose cognizance of the facts he did not suspect? Would Alfred Boyer have given way to the passionate longing he felt to interrupt this half confession with his own complete confession by crying out to the Prince: "I have read the will!" Would he, on the other hand, have continued to listen to this discourse, seeking to solve an enigma of which the answer had not yet been given?

An incident he had not hoped for suddenly extricated him from his uncertainty, all at once giving frightful distinctness to what had until then been only a vague guess. The servant came to tell him that Monsieur de Contay was waiting to see him.

"I got some information, as I thought I would, from my cousin," said Raymond after the other had flown downstairs four steps at a time in his haste to know. "I was not able to bring it to you before, and I have only a minute." He pointed to the carriage which was waiting for him in the street. "Here it is. The present Duchesse d'Ivrea has never been received, either by the family or by any one else. She was a fast woman, who had formerly been on the stage. She was then called Leona d'Asti. After living a very gay life, she married an old swindler on his deathbed, a confessed thief named Audry, who left her a very large fortune. Once a widow, she married d'Ivrea, a poor devil, who, it seems, had eaten and drunk up everything he had—a most shameful union for one of his name. Now you know as much as I do."...

Next morning, when the Prince of Augsbourg awoke from a sleep broken by all the nightmares by which intense moral anguish pursues us even in our rest, his first glance was toward the ill-fated envelope that his fingers had not touched since he had placed it under the book. Had he been dreaming? Had all the internal tempest of which he had been the victim been a hallucination, a stroke of madness? The envelope was not there. He jumped out of bed and went to the mantel; he lifted up the book. Nothing! Immediately the whole series of events came back to him. No; he had not been mad. The scenes of the preceding day arose in his mind with a certainty that left no room for doubt; his visit to his sister-in-law, his return to his lodgings, Alfred Boyer handing to him the envelope and what had followed, his afternoon spent in struggling against temptation, Alfred's return, then his going out again, the note that the young man had afterward sent him and in which he said that he would dine out with a friend. The Prince had spent the evening alone, eating his heart out over the evil action that had such a horrible attraction for him. He had gone to bed early, without having been able to eat anything, in order to try to forget this ill-fated will, to forget himself. He had heard his neighbor come in about midnight—then all was a blank. He had fallen asleep, and now this mystery, this envelope missing. But how? Stolen—by whom?

He began to dress, a prey to the superstitious fear that sometimes lays hold of the most energetic men in face of an absolutely incomprehensible fact, and little by little his ideas began to coordinate in his mind. Of the two doors of his chamber, one, that which opened upon the stairs, was fastened with a bolt; he had neglected to turn the key on that which led to Alfred Boyer's room. The thief, then, must have come in by that door during his sleep. But he had remained awake until the young man had come in. Suddenly the Prince recalled the latter's face at the time of the discovery of the will; how he had flushed and avoided his eyes. He remembered also the expression on that transparent face while, late in the afternoon, he had been developing those projects, all of which presupposed a change in the condition of his fortune. As in a flash of lightning the whole thing was clear to him. He sank half dressed upon a chair. He sat there motionless, a prey to a tumult of so many contradictory and violent emotions that his whole body trembled; disillusionment as to this fortune, suddenly snatched away, if the young man had actually destroyed the will; shame at having been seen by him, tempted and giving way to the temptation, anger at Alfred's audacity in having interfered, and by what right? Through his veneration for the marshal's memory, remorse that this veneration had been stronger in an outsider than in himself, and, in spite of all, a sort of sorrowful joy at this deliverance, if the will no longer really existed, with its shameful conditions, which were, indeed, less shameful than the origin of ignoble money. Again the d'Ivrea house rose before his mind's eye; he saw the great door hung with black draperies, with his coat-of-arms, the bier upon which that miserable creature, that public woman enriched by a swindler, who had dishonored his brother, should lie, himself behind her conducting this sinister mourning; and the tomb, the tomb! Wildly, as the prisoner who escapes from his cell through broken bars stained with his blood, but sustained, intoxicated by the freedom of liberty, he burst into the room where Alfred sat at his table. His bed had not been disturbed. He had not slept, and his pale face, his burning eyes, betrayed in what agony he had spent the sleepless hours. Ever since he had glided into the Prince's bedroom to take the will and burn it he had been awaiting the terrible moment when his patron should awake, determined this time not to make any denial and to suffer the consequences of his act, whatever they might be.

"Boyer," said the Prince, "when you gave me that envelope yesterday, had you read the paper that it contained?"

"Yes," replied the young man.

"Did you know who the person was that wrote that paper?"

"I have learned since."

"And it was you who destroyed the will?"

"It was I."

"It was you!" cried the Prince; "you!" Then, bursting into sobs: "Let me embrace you and thank you in his name!" and he pointed with his hand to the thin sheets on the table in which was to be recognized the proud, delicate writing of "Catinat of the Grande Armée," of "the Black Lion," as the old soldiers of the First Empire had called him to distinguish him from his brother in arms, Ney, "the Red Lion." Tears streamed down his face, so like that of his glorious ancestor, while he pressed Alfred to his breast, and both of them, the old man and the young, felt that exquisite emotion that floods our souls with melancholy and an almost supernatural serenity when we have paid a sacred debt to the dead.