Gloria Victis!

ccident. But the incongruous impression made by those large, dark eyes upon almost every one who saw the young man for the first time was extremely fleeting, and passed away as soon as Oswald began to talk--as soon as his look became animated.

His cousin Georges was at least a dozen years his elder, and nearly a head shorter than he. Many persons declared that he looked like a jockey; they were wrong. He looked like what he was, a prodigal son, very well-born. Spare in figure, his face smoothly shaven, except for a long sandy moustache, his hair quite gray, and brushed up from the temples after a vanished fashion, his features keen and mobile, his eyes round as a bird's, his carriage rather stooping and with motions characterized by a certain negligence, he produced the impression of a man who had seen a great deal of the world, and who now took a philosophic view of his life and of his position.

Oswald is the heir, Georges is the next to inherit.

Scarcely were the usual formal greetings