PART II
CHAPTER XVII A DÉJEÛNER AT THE CAFÉ DE PARIS
The death of my father cast me into an entirely new life. Anyone less fitting than the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan to be the guardian of a child of nine it would be hard to imagine at first sight. But my father was no fool.
This gorgeous old night-moth of the Second Empire, this frequenter of Tortoni's and the Café de Paris—always hard up, with an income of two hundred thousand francs a year—was a man of rigid honour in his way.
Left sole and irresponsible guardian of me and my money, he shuffled out of his difficulties and bothers by placing the latter in the funds and the former in the Bourdaloue College—that same college of the Jesuit fathers where the Comte de Coigny was receiving his education.
Here nine years of my life were spent—nine dull but not unhappy years. Lame and unfit for the army, completely cut off from the only profession fit for a gentleman—to use the Vicomte's expression—I saw the others go off to join the Military College, and I would not have felt it so bitterly had not De Coigny been amongst them. He was my natural enemy. All the time we spent together at the Bourdaloue, we scarcely spoke a word one to the other. Speechless enmity: there can scarcely be a worse condition between boys or men.
Once a month or so the Vicomte came to see me. Joubert came often. He was installed as caretaker in the Château de Saluce, and he would bring me presents of game and plovers' eggs, huge Jaronel pears from the orchard, and cakes baked by Fauchard's wife.