Here I see the life of France, and I belong to her tombs!" "I don't quite understand you," said Lemercier.

"If you think that because your father and grandfather were Legitimists, you have not the fair field of living ambition open to you under the Empire, you never were more mistaken.

'Moyen age,' and even rococo, are all the rage.
You have no idea how valuable your name would be either at the Imperial Court or in a Commercial Company.

But with your fortune you are independent of all but fashion and the Jockey Club.
"And 'apropos' of that, pardon me,--what villain made your coat ?--let me know; I will denounce him to the police." Half amused, half amazed, Alain Marquis de Rochebriant looked at Frederic Lemercier much as a good-tempered lion may look upon a lively poodle who takes a liberty with his mane, and after a pause he replied curtly, "The clothes I wear at Paris were made in Bretagne; and if the name of Rochebriant be of any value at all in Paris, which I doubt, let me trust that it will make me acknowledged as 'gentilhomme,' whatever my taste in a coat or whatever the doctrines of a club composed--of jockeys." "Ha, ha!" cried Lemercier, freeing himself from the arm of his friend, and laughing the more irresistibly as he encountered the grave look of the Marquis.

"Pardon me,--I can't help it,--the Jockey Club,--composed of jockeys!--it is too much!--the best joke.