It was a Gargantuan repast, which lasted for six
whole hours, and by abundance the President tried to vie with du
Croisier's elegance.
And so du Ronceret's life and its accessories were just what might
have been expected from his character and his false position. He felt
dissatisfied at home without precisely knowing what was the matter;
but he dared not go to any expense to change existing conditions, and
was only too glad to put by seven or eight thousand francs every year,
so as to leave his son Fabien a handsome private fortune. Fabien du
Ronceret had no mind for the magistracy, the bar, or the civil
service, and his pronounced turn for doing nothing drove his parent to
despair.
On this head there was rivalry between the President and the
Vice-President, old M. Blondet. M. Blondet, for a long time past, had
been sedulously cultivating an acquaintance between his son and the
Blandureau family. The Blandureaus were well-to-do linen
manufacturers, with an only daughter, and it was on this daughter that
the President had fixed his choice of a wife for Fabien. Now, Joseph
Blondet's marriage with Mlle. Blandureau depended on his nomination to
the post which his father, old Blondet, hoped to obtain for him when
he himself should retire.
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