And he, the present Baron, Henri by name, and born in 1836, had only seriously gone into business on Baron Gregoire's death soon after the Franco-German War.

However, he had done so with such a rageful appetite, that in a quarter of a century he had again doubled the family fortune.

He rotted and devoured, corrupted, swallowed everything that he touched; and he was also the tempter personified--the man who bought all consciences that were for sale--having fully understood the new times and its tendencies in presence of the democracy, which in its turn had become hungry and impatient.

Inferior though he was both to his father and his grandfather, being a man of enjoyment, caring less for the work of conquest than the division of the spoil, he nevertheless remained a terrible fellow, a sleek triumpher, whose operations were all certainties, who amassed millions at each stroke, and treated with governments on a footing of equality, able as he was to place, if not France, at least a ministry in his pocket.

In one century and three generations, royalty had become embodied in him: a royalty already threatened, already shaken by the tempest close ahead.