Dr.Aubertin had lived in the chateau twenty years.

He was a man of science, and did not care a button for money; so he had retired from the practice of medicine, and pursued his researches at ease under the baron's roof.

They all loved him, and laughed at his occasional reveries, in the days of prosperity; and now, in one great crisis, the protege became the protector, to their astonishment and his own.

But it was an age of ups and downs.

This amiable theorist was one of the oldest verbal republicans in Europe.