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“Here is a splendid article by Rochefort. That fellow is marvelous.”

He read the article in a loud voice, laying so much stress on its most striking passages that he did not notice the entrance of his friend.

M. de Meroul had a paper in each hand: “Le Gaulois” for himself and “Le Clarion” for his wife.

The ardent prose of the master-writer who overthrew the empire, violently declaimed, recited in the accent of the south, rang through the peaceful drawing-room, shook the old curtains with their rigid folds, seemed to splash the walls, the large upholstered chairs, the solemn furniture fixed in the same position for the past century, with a hail of words, rebounding, impudent, ironical, and crushing.

The husband and the wife, the one standing, the other seated, listened in a state of stupor, so scandalized that they no longer even ventured to make a gesture. Mouradour flung out the concluding passage in the article as one sets off a stream of fireworks; then in an emphatic tone he remarked:

“That’s a stinger, eh?”

But suddenly he perceived the two prints belonging to his friend, and he seemed himself for a moment overcome with astonishment. Then he came across to his host with great strides, demanding in an angry tone:

“What do you want to do with these papers?”

M. de. Meroul replied in a hesitating voice:

“Why, these–these are my–my newspapers.”

“Your newspapers! Look here, now, you are only laughing at me! You will do me the favor to read mine, to stir you up with a few new ideas, and, as for yours–this is what I do with them–“

And before his host, filled with confusion, could prevent him, he seized the two newspapers and flung them out through the window. Then he gravely placed “La Justice” in the hands of Madame de Meroul and “Le Voltaire” in those of her husband, himself sinking into an armchair to finish “L’Intransigeant.”

The husband and the wife, through feelings of delicacy, made a show of reading a little, then they handed back the Republican newspapers which they touched with their finger-tips as if they had been poisoned.

Then Mouradour burst out laughing, and said:

“A week of this sort of nourishment, and I’ll have you converted to my ideas.”

At the end of a week, in fact, he ruled the house. He had shut the door on the cure, whom Madame de Meroul went to see in secret. He gave orders that neither the “Gaulois” nor the “Clarion” were to be admitted into the house, which a manservant went to get in a mysterious fashion at the post-office, and which, on his entrance, were hidden away under the sofa cushions. He regulated everything just as he liked, always charming, always good-natured, a jovial and all-powerful tyrant.

Other friends were about to come on a visit, religious people with Legitimist opinions. The master and mistress of the chateau considered it would be impossible to let them meet their lively guest, and not knowing what to do, announced to Joseph Mouradour one evening that they were obliged to go away from home for a few days about a little matter of business, and they begged of him to remain in the house alone.

He showed no trace of emotion, and replied:

“Very well; ’tis all the same to me; I’ll wait here for you as long as you like. What I say is this–there need be no ceremony between friends. You’re quite right to look after your own affairs–why the devil shouldn’t you? I’ll not take offense at your doing that, quite the contrary. It only makes me feel quite at my ease with you. Go, my friends–I’ll wait for you.”

M. and Madame de Meroul started next morning.

He is waiting for them.