“Oh! one begins about a beetle, but one ends Heaven knows where.”
Riviere profited by this advice. He even improved on it. In due course he threw himself into Aubertin’s way. He stopped the doctor reverentially, and said he had heard he was an entomologist. WOULD he be kind enough to tell him what was this enormous chrysalis he had just found?
“The death’s head moth!” cried Aubertin with enthusiasm—“the death’s head moth! a great rarity in this district. Where found you this?” Riviere undertook to show him the place.
It was half a league distant. Coming and going he had time to make friends with Aubertin, and this was the easier that the old gentleman, who was a physiognomist as well as ologist, had seen goodness and sensibility in Edouard’s face. At the end of the walk he begged the doctor to accept the chrysalis. The doctor coquetted. “That would be a robbery. You take an interest in these things yourself—at least I hope so.”
The young rogue confessed modestly to the sentiment of entomology, but “the government worked him so hard as to leave him no hopes of shining in so high a science,” said he sorrowfully.
The doctor pitied him. “A young man of your attainments and tastes to be debarred from the everlasting secrets of nature, by the fleeting politics of the day.”
Riviere shrugged his shoulders. “Somebody must do the dirty work,” said he, chuckling inwardly.
The chrysalis went to Beaurepaire in the pocket of a grateful man, who that same evening told the whole party his conversation with young Riviere, on whom he pronounced high encomiums. Rose’s saucy eyes sparkled with fun: you might have lighted a candle at one and exploded a mine at the other; but not a syllable did she utter.
The doctor proved a key, and opened the enchanted castle. One fine day he presented his friend in the Pleasaunce to the baroness and her daughters.
They received him with perfect politeness. Thus introduced, and as he was not one to let the grass grow under his feet, he soon obtained a footing as friend of the family, which, being now advised by Josephine, he took care not to compromise by making love to Rose before the baroness. However, he insisted on placing his financial talent at their service. He surveyed and valued their lands, and soon discovered that all their farms were grossly underlet. Luckily most of the leases were run out. He prepared a new rent roll, and showed it Aubertin, now his fast friend. Aubertin at his request obtained a list of the mortgages, and Edouard drew a balance-sheet founded on sure data, and proved to the baroness that in able hands the said estate was now solvent.