A man succeeds through his wife, and you are handsome and clever enough to make the fortune of a husband.
Hey! the mischief! you could hold your own against all the court ladies." Suzanne, whose mind took in at a flash the chevalier's last words, was eager to run off to du Bousquier, but, not wishing to depart too abruptly, she questioned the chevalier about Paris, all the while helping him to dress.

The chevalier, however, divined her desire to be off, and favored it by asking her to tell Cesarine to bring up his chocolate, which Madame Lardot made for him every morning.

Suzanne then slipped away to her new victim, whose biography must here be given.
Born of an old Alencon family, du Bousquier was a cross between the bourgeois and the country squire.

Finding himself without means on the death of his father, he went, like other ruined provincials, to Paris.
On the breaking out of the Revolution he took part in public affairs.
In spite of revolutionary principles, which made a hobby of republican honesty, the management of public business in those days was by no means clean.

A political spy, a stock-jobber, a contractor, a man who confiscated in collusion with the syndic of a commune the property of emigres in order to sell them and buy them in, a minister, and a general were all equally engaged in public business.