How or where he was pitched and tossed about during the next few years he himself probably could not have told you; but when, a few years later, we come across him again under the Directory, we find him attached as commissary of stores to the army of the Rhine, or the army of Italy, and dodging from one to the other, according as this or that general showed a disposition to shoot him. For army commissaries are of two classes, those whose business makes them beggars and those who become millionaires; the former generally shoot themselves, while the latter are shot by others. But the last case is much the rarer.
Fortunately for himself, Monsieur Griffard belonged to the class who are not shot, but become millionaires. He managed to acquire some of the neat little estates which the emigré magnates had left to the care of the State, and when they came home again in the days of the Restoration, Monsieur Griffard was one of the lucky men who watched the gorgeous pageant of the march of the allied armies through Paris from his own balcony. Several of the emigrés, who came in batches in the rear of the triumphant hosts, beheld with amazement the
splendid five-storeyed palace in the Boulevard des Italiens, which was not there at all when they last saw Paris, and when they inquired after its owner, the name they heard was quite unfamiliar to them.
But it did not remain unfamiliar for long. The owner of millions has very little difficulty in acquiring distinctions which will admit him into the very best society. In a short time Monsieur Griffard's name became one of the most harmonious of passwords. An elegant soirée, a genial matinée, a horse race, an orgie, an elopement, were not considered complete without him, and Monsieur Griffard never remained away, for all such occasions were so many opportunities to an able business man for learning all about the passions, the follies, the status, the extravagance, or the necessities of other people, and building safe calculations upon what he learnt.
Monsieur Griffard was one of the boldest speculators in the world. He would lend large amounts to ruined spendthrifts whom their own servants summoned for their monthly wages, and yet, somehow or other, he always made his money by it. When I say "his money," I mean that he got back about twice as much as he expended. He did not risk his money for nothing. Amongst all the villas and pavilions on the Ile de Jerusalem, Monsieur Griffard's pleasure-house was the most costly and the most magnificent. It was built on a little mound, which human ingenuity had exalted into a hill, and its parade looked into the waters of the Seine. In point of style it owed something to almost every age and nation—a great point with the architects of the day, who, equally rejecting all pedantic classicism, and all rococo prettiness, strove instead to make everything they put their hands to as complicated, bizarre, and incongruous as possible. It was not enough that the garden
itself should stand on an island, but it was surrounded by an artificial stream meandering in the most masterly style in every direction, and with all sorts of bridges thrown across it, from an American suspension-bridge to a rustic Breton bridge, composed of wood and bark, and covered with ivy. And each of these bridges had its own warden, with a halbert across his shoulder, and the wardens had little sentry-boxes to correspond with the style of the bridges, some like hermitages, others like lighthouses, and their own peculiar trumpets to proclaim loudly to approaching guests over which of the bridges they ought to go to reach the castle.
Beyond the bridges extended the winding ways of the English garden, which in those days had quite thrown into the background the earlier taste for stony, wall-like, rectilinear alleys. A man might now wander helplessly about for hours among densely foliaged trees without being able to find his destination. He would see the beds beside him everywhere thickly planted with flowers in full bloom, and at every turn he would come upon arcades of jasmine with idyllic benches underneath, or marble statues of ancient divinities overgrown with creeping gobæas, or pyramids of modish flowers piled one on the top of the other. In one place he would behold masterly reproduced ruins, with agaric and cactus monsters planted amongst them. In another place he would observe an Egyptian tomb, with real mummies inside, and outside eternally burning lamps, which were replenished with oil early every morning, or a Roman altar with vessels of carved stone and Corinthian vases. Here and there, in more open places, fountains and waterfalls plashed and gurgled in marble basins, throwing jets of water into the air, and enabling merry little goldfish to disport themselves, whence the stream
flowed among Oriental reeds into artfully hidden lakes, where, on the tranquil watery mirror, swam beautiful white swans, which did not sing as sweetly as the poets would have us believe, but made up for it by eating no end of Indian corn, which was then very much dearer than pure wheat.
Supposing a man to have safely run the gauntlet of all these obstructions and admired all these marvels, he would, at last, somehow or other, stumble upon the terrace leading to this Tusculum, every stage of which was planted thickly with orange trees, some in bloom, while others were weighed down by loads of fruit. Among these orange trees to-day we perceive that young gentleman we have already been fortunate enough to meet. Nevertheless, as a whole twelve months has elapsed since then, and the fashion has changed completely, we must look at him pretty hard before we shall recognize him.
The calicot season is at an end. The young dandy now wears a long overcoat reaching to the knee, buttoned by broad pendant gew-gaws, with stiff, inexpressibly high-reaching boots. There is no longer the trace of a moustache; it has been supplanted by whiskers, of a provocative description, extending from the ears to the nose, and quite changing the character of the face. The hair is parted, smoothed in the middle, and pressed down from the top by a frightful sort of thing, which they called chapeau à la Bolivar, a hat with so broad a rim that it could serve just as well as an umbrella.