“They say that Monsieur Moreau had no more than a thousand crowns in the world when Monsieur le Comte put him in as land steward at Presles?” said the servant.
“But in seventeen years’ time—since 1806—the man must have made something,” replied Pierrotin.
“To be sure,” said the servant, shaking his head. “And masters are queer too. I hope, for Moreau’s sake, that he has feathered his nest.”
“I often deliver hampers at your house in the Chaussée-d’Antin,” said Pierrotin, “but I have never had the privilege of seeing either the master or his lady.”
“Monsieur le Comte is a very good sort,” said the man confidentially; “but if he wants you to hold your tongue about his cognito, there is a screw loose you may depend.—At least, that is what we think at home. For why else should he counter-order the traveling carriage? Why ride in a public chaise? A peer of France might take a hired chaise, you would think.”
“A hired chaise might cost him as much as forty francs for the double journey; for, I can tell, if you don’t know our road, it is fit for squirrels to climb. Everlastingly up and down!” said Pierrotin. “Peer of France or tradesman, everybody looks at both sides of a five-franc piece.—If this trip means mischief to Monsieur Moreau—dear, dear, I should be vexed indeed if any harm came to him. By the Mass! Can no way be found of warning him? For he is a real good ’un, an honest sort, the king of men, I say—”
“Pooh! Monsieur le Comte is much attached to Monsieur Moreau,” said the other. “But if you will take a bit of good advice from me, mind your own business, and let him mind his. We all have quite enough to do to take care of ourselves. You just do what you are asked to do; all the more because it does not pay to play fast and loose with monseigneur. Add to that, the Count is generous. If you oblige him that much,” said the man, measuring off the nail of one finger, “he will reward you that much,” and he stretched out his arm.
This judicious hint, and yet more the illustrative figure, coming from a man so high in office as the Comte de Sérizy’s second footman, had the effect of cooling Pierrotin’s zeal for the steward of Presles.
“Well, good day, Monsieur Pierrotin,” said the man.
A short sketch of the previous history of the Comte de Sérizy and his steward is here necessary to explain the little drama about to be played in Pierrotin’s coach.
Monsieur Hugret de Sérizy is descended in a direct line from the famous Président Hugret, ennobled by Francis the First. They bear as arms party per pale or and sable, an orle and two lozenges counter changed. Motto, I Semper Melius eris, which, like the two winders assumed as supporters, shows the modest pretence of the citizen class at a time when each rank of society had its own place in the State, and also the artlessness of the age in the punning motto, where eris with the I at the beginning, and the final S of Melius, represent the name Serisi of the estate, whence the title.
The present Count’s father was a President of Parlement before the Revolution. He himself, a member of the High Council of State in 1787, at the early age of two-and-twenty, was favorably known for certain reports on some delicate matters. He did not emigrate during the Revolution, but remained on his lands of Sérizy, near Arpajon, where the respect felt for his father protected him from molestation.
After spending a few years in nursing the old President, whom he lost in 1794, he was elected to the Council of Five Hundred, and took up his legislative functions as a distraction from his grief.
After the eighteenth Brumaire, Monsieur de Sérizy became the object—as did all the families connected with the old Parlements—of the First Consul’s attentions, and by him he was appointed a Councillor of State to reorganize one of the most disorganized branches of the Administration. Thus this scion of a great historical family became one of the most important wheels in the vast and admirable machinery due to Napoleon. The State Councillor ere long left his department to be made a Minister. The Emperor created him Count and Senator, and he was proconsul to two different kingdoms in succession.
In 1806, at the age of forty, he married the sister of the ci-devant Marquis de Ronquerolles, and widow, at the age of twenty, of Gaubert, one of the most distinguished of the Republican Generals, who left her all his wealth. This match, suitable in point of rank, doubled the Comte de Sérizy’s already considerable fortune; he was now the brother-in-law of the ci-devant Marquis du Rouvre, whom Napoleon created Count and appointed to be his chamberlain.
In 1814, worn out with incessant work, Monsieur de Sérizy, whose broken health needed rest, gave up all his appointments, left the district of which Napoleon had made him Governor, and came to Paris, where the Emperor was compelled by ocular evidence to concede his claims. This indefatigable master, who could not believe in fatigue in other people, had at first supposed the necessity that prompted the Comte de Sérizy to be simple defection. Though the Senator was not in disgrace, it was said that he had cause for complaint of Napoleon. Consequently, when the Bourbons came back, Louis XVIII, whom Monsieur de Sérizy acknowledged as his legitimate sovereign, granted to the Senator, now a peer of France, the highly confidential post of Steward of his Privy Purse, and made him a Minister of State.
On the 20th March, Monsieur
