Y surprise in discovering in one of the rooms of this dull house, the portrait of a woman so beautiful, charming and distingue, that it seemed placed there expressly to continually mock and scoff at that wicked red nose. The portrait so closely resembled one of my old class-mates, that I could not refrain from questioning the old miser about it. He then gruffly informed me that the original was his sister, Madame de Saint-Herem, who died some years since. But you would have died laughing had you seen them when I asked if she had left a son." "Well, what did they do?" "At the name of young Saint-Herem you would have thought I had evoked the devil. Red-nose grew fiery and fairly glowed; while her worthy father admitted, with a withering glance at me, that he had the misfortune, in fact, to be the uncle of an infernal young bandit known as Saint-Herem." "This young man must bear a very bad reputation." "Florestan?--why, he is the noblest and most charming fellow in the world!" "But his uncle tells you--" "My dear father, Saint-Herem and myself were close friends at college, and you must judge of him by what I shall relate. I had lost sight of him for years, when, as I was passing along the boulevard six months ago, I saw everybody turn to look at something on the road, and I did likewise. I then perceived two magnificent horses harnessed
