amenity. Kings enjoy contradicting more than people think. Like most
youngest children, Emilie de Fontaine was a Benjamin spoilt by almost

everybody. The King's coolness, therefore, caused the Count all the
more regret, because no marriage was ever so difficult to arrange as

that of this darling daughter. To understand all the obstacles we must
make our way into the fine residence where the official was housed at

the expense of the nation. Emilie had spent her childhood on the
family estate, enjoying the abundance which suffices for the joys of

early youth; her lightest wishes had been law to her sisters, her
brothers, her mother, and even her father. All her relations doted on

her. Having come to years of discretion just when her family was
loaded with the favors of fortune, the enchantment of life continued.

The luxury of Paris seemed to her just as natural as a wealth of
flowers or fruit, or as the rural plenty which had been the joy of her

first years. Just as in her childhood she had never been thwarted in
the satisfaction of her playful desires, so now, at fourteen, she was

still obeyed when she rushed into the whirl of fashion.
Thus, accustomed by degrees to the enjoyment of money, elegance of

dress, of gilded drawing-rooms and fine carriages, became as necessary
to her as the compliments of flattery, sincere or false, and the

festivities and vanities of court life. Like most spoiled children,
she tyrannized over those who loved her, and kept her blandishments

for those who were indifferent. Her faults grew with her growth, and
her parents were to gather the bitter fruits of this disastrous

education. At the age of nineteen Emilie de Fontaine had not yet been
pleased to make a choice from among the many young men whom her

father's politics brought to his entertainments. Though so young, she
asserted in society all the freedom of mind that a married woman can

enjoy. Her beauty was so remarkable that, for her, to appear in a room
was to be its queen; but, like sovereigns, she had no friends, though

she was everywhere the object of attentions to which a finer nature
than hers might perhaps have succumbed. Not a man, not even an old

man, had it in him to contradict the opinions of a young girl whose
lightest look could rekindle love in the coldest heart.

She had been educated with a care which her sisters had not enjoyed;
painted pretty well, spoke Italian and English, and played the piano

brilliantly; her voice, trained by the best masters, had a ring in it
which made her singing irresistibly charming. Clever, and intimate

with every branch of literature, she might have made folks believe
that, as Mascarille says, people of quality come into the world

knowing everything. She could argue fluently on Italian or Flemish
painting, on the Middle Ages or the Renaissance; pronounced at

haphazard on books new or old, and could expose the defects of a work
with a cruellygraceful wit. The simplest thing she said was accepted

by an admiring crowd as a fetfah of the Sultan by the Turks. She thus
dazzled shallow persons; as to deeper minds, her natural tact enabled

her to discern them, and for them she put forth so much fascination
that, under cover of her charms, she escaped their scrutiny. This

enchanting veneer covered a careless heart; the opinion--common to
many young girls--that no one else dwelt in a sphere so lofty as to be

able to understand the merits of her soul; and a pride based no less
on her birth than on her beauty. In the absence of the overwhelming

sentiment which, sooner or later, works havoc in a woman's heart, she
spent her young ardor in an immoderate love of distinctions, and

expressed the deepest contempt for persons of inferior birth.
Supremely impertinent to all newly-created nobility, she made every

effort to get her parents recognized as equals by the most illustrious
families of the Saint-Germain quarter.

These sentiments had not escaped the observing eye of Monsieur de
Fontaine, who more than once, when his two elder girls were married,

had smarted under Emilie's sarcasm. Logical readers will be surprised
to see the old Royalist bestowing his eldest daughter on a Receiver-

General, possessed, indeed, of some old hereditaryestates, but whose
name was not preceded by the little word to which the throne owed so

many partisans, and his second to a magistrate too lately Baronified
to obscure the fact that his father had sold firewood. This noteworthy

change in the ideas of a noble on the verge of his sixtieth year--an
age when men rarelyrenounce their convictions--was due not merely to

his unfortunateresidence in the modern Babylon, where, sooner or
later, country folks all get their corners rubbed down; the Comte de

Fontaine's new political conscience was also a result of the King's
advice and friendship. The philosophicalprince had taken pleasure in

converting the Vendeen to the ideas required by the advance of the
nineteenth century, and the new aspect of the Monarchy. Louis XVIII.

aimed at fusing parties as Napoleon had fused things and men. The
legitimate King, who was not less clever perhaps than his rival, acted

in a contrary direction. The last head of the House of Bourbon was
just as eager to satisfy the third estate and the creations of the

Empire, by curbing the clergy, as the first of the Napoleons had been
to attract the grand old nobility, or to endow the Church. The Privy

Councillor, being in the secret of these royal projects, had
insensibly become one of the most prudent and influential leaders of

that moderate party which most desired a fusion of opinion in the
interests of the nation. He preached the expensive doctrines of

constitutional government, and lent all his weight to encourage the
political see-saw which enabled his master to rule France in the midst

of storms. Perhaps Monsieur de Fontaine hoped that one of the sudden
gusts of legislation, whose unexpected efforts then startled the

oldest politicians, might carry him up to the rank of peer. One of his
most rigid principles was to recognize no nobility in France but that

of the peerage--the only families that might enjoy any privileges.
"A nobilitybereft of privileges," he would say, "is a tool without a

handle."
As far from Lafayette's party as he was from La Bourdonnaye's, he

ardently engaged in the task of general reconciliation, which was
to result in a new era and splendid fortunes for France. He

strove to convince the families who frequented his drawing-room,
or those whom he visited, how few favorable openings would

henceforth be offered by a civil or military career. He urged
mothers to give their boys a start in independent and industrial

professions, explaining that military posts and high Government
appointments must at last pertain, in a quite constitutional

order, to the younger sons of members of the peerage. According
to him, the people had conquered a sufficiently large share in

practical government by its elective assembly, its appointments
to law-offices, and those of the exchequer, which, said he, would

always, as heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished
men of the third estate.

These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the prudent
matches for his eldest girls to which they had led, met with strong

resistance in the bosom of his family. The Comtesse de Fontaine
remained faithful to the ancient beliefs which no woman could disown,

who, through her mother, belonged to the Rohans. Although she had for
a while opposed the happiness and fortune awaiting her two eldest

girls, she yielded to those private considerations which husband and
wife confide to each other when their heads are resting on the same

pillow. Monsieur de Fontaine calmlypointed out to his wife, by exact
arithmetic that their residence in Paris, the necessity for

entertaining, the magnificence of the house which made up to them now
for the privations so bravely shared in La Vendee, and the expenses of

their sons, swallowed up the chief part of their income from salaries.
They must therefore seize, as a boon from heaven, the opportunities

which offered for settling their girls with such wealth. Would they
not some day enjoy sixty--eighty--a hundred thousand francs a year?

Such advantageous matches were not to be met with every day for girls
without a portion. Again, it was time that they should begin to think

of economizing, to add to the estate of Fontaine, and re-establish the
old territorial fortune of the family. The Countess yielded to such

cogent arguments, as every mother would have done in her place, though
perhaps with a better grace; but she declared that Emilie, at any

rate, should marry in such a way as to satisfy the pride she had
unfortunately contributed to foster in the girl's young soul.

Thus events, which ought to have brought joy into the family, had
introduced a small leaven of discord. The Receiver-General and the

young lawyer were the objects of a ceremonious formality which the
Countess and Emilie contrived to create. This etiquette soon found

even ampler opportunity for the display of domestictyranny; for
Lieutenant-General de Fontaine married Mademoiselle Mongenod, the

daughter of a rich banker; the President very sensibly found a wife in
a young lady whose father, twice or thrice a millionaire, had traded

in salt; and the third brother, faithful to his plebeian doctrines,
married Mademoiselle Grossetete, the only daughter of the Receiver-

General at Bourges. The three sisters-in-law and the two brothers-in-