The old gentleman, who had come to Paris from Touraine
to satisfy his curiosity about Madame Firmiani, and found it not at
all assuaged by the Parisian gossip which he heard, was a man of honor
and breeding. His sole heir was a nephew, whom he greatly loved, in
whose interests he planted his poplars. When a man thinks without
annoyance about his heir, and watches the trees grow daily finer for
his future benefit, affection grows too with every blow of the spade
around her roots. Though this phenomenal feeling is not common, it is
still to be met with in Touraine.
This cherished nephew, named Octave de Camps, was a descendant of the
famous Abbe de Camps, so well known to bibliophiles and learned men,
--who, by the bye, are not at all the same thing. People in the
provinces have the bad habit of branding with a sort of decent
reprobation any young man who sells his inherited estates. This
antiquated prejudice has interfered very much with the stock-jobbing
which the present government encourages for its own interests. Without
consulting his uncle, Octave had lately sold an estate belonging to
him to the Black Band.[*] The chateau de Villaines would have been
pulled down were it not for the remonstrances which the old uncle made
to the representatives of the "Pickaxe company." To increase the old
man's wrath, a distant relative (one of those cousins of small means
and much astuteness about whom shrewd provincials are wont to remark,
"No lawsuits for me with him!") had, as it were by accident, come to
visit Monsieur de Bourbonne, and _incidentally_ informed him of his
nephew's ruin.
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