The farmer-general left none but collateral relations, who had offered the house in Rue de Bretonvilliers for sale. But time passed and no purchaser appeared. The roués of those days preferred to have their _petites maisons_ in the faubourgs, or in the country--altogether outside the city. So it had been decided to offer the house for hire, and there the Comte de Marvejols had taken up his abode when he ceased to live in his father's house.
Within a few weeks, Léodgard's situation had totally changed. The young noble whom we saw near the Pont-aux-Choux staking his cloak because he no longer had a denier to stake now cut a brilliant figure; he had repaid the sums that he owed his friends, and it was said that he had squared accounts with the old usurer to whom he had had recourse so often; his dress now was in the extreme of fashion, rich jewels gleamed in his sword hilt and in the clasps of his ribbons; the courtesans to whom he addressed his homage received sumptuous gifts from him and praised his generosity incessantly; lastly, he often gave entertainments to his friends and their mistresses, in his new residence, and at those festivities nothing was lacking: the daintiest dishes, the most exquisite wines, were supplied lavishly, in an apartment where the brilliant glare of chandeliers and candles was reflected on all sides by the lovely Venetian mirrors with which the walls were covered.
The right wing of the _petite maison_ in Rue de Bretonvilliers was brilliantly illuminated; from the courtyard one could hear the bursts of laughter of the guests who were still in the banquet hall, seated, or rather half reclining, like the Greeks, around a table laden with flowers, decanters full and empty, and the débris of a supper, the remnants of which would have made a royal feast for more than one family.
In an adjoining room, the portières of which were drawn aside, were card tables, surrounded by numerous lovers of games of chance. Some women were among them, and seemed not the least eager in the pursuit of luck and in contending against it.
Lastly, in the less brilliantly lighted rooms of the suite, away from the intrepid gamblers and banqueters, divers couples were seated on sofas, talking, if not of their love affairs, of their amorous adventures. Some fair ones sought, by dint of eloquent glances, to subdue hearts which had thus far resisted their charms, but which would naturally be more submissive after a sumptuous supper, and in an assemblage where pleasure was the only law that anyone chose to recognize.