sometime forage-contractor. Du Croisier, on the other hand, was a man
to bear a grudge and nurse a vengeance for a score of years. He hated

Chesnel and the d'Esgrignon family with the smothered, all-absorbing
hate only to be found in a country town. His rebuff had simply ruined

him with the maliciousprovincials among whom he had come to live,
thinking to rule over them. It was so real a disaster that he was not

long in feeling the consequences of it. He betook himself in
desperation to a wealthy old maid, and met with a second refusal. Thus

failed the ambitious schemes with which he had started. He had lost
his hope of a marriage with Mlle. d'Esgrignon, which would have opened

the Faubourg Saint-Germain of the province to him; and after the
second rejection, his credit fell away to such an extent that it was

almost as much as he could do to keep his position in the second rank.
In 1805, M. de la Roche-Guyon, the oldest son of an ancient family

which had previously intermarried with the d'Esgrignons, made
proposals in form through Maitre Chesnel for Mlle. Marie Armande Clair

d'Esgrignon. She declined to hear the notary.
"You must have guessed before now that I am a mother, dear Chesnel,"

she said; she had just put her nephew, a fine little boy of five, to
bed.

The old Marquis rose and went up to his sister, but just returned from
the cradle; he kissed her hand reverently, and as he sat down again,

found words to say:
"My sister, you are a d'Esgrignon."

A quiver ran through the noble girl; the tears stood in her eyes. M.
d'Esgrignon, the father of the present Marquis, had married a second

wife, the daughter of a farmer of taxes ennobled by Louis XIV. It was
a shocking mesalliance in the eyes of his family, but fortunately of

no importance, since a daughter was the one child of the marriage.
Armande knew this. Kind as her brother had always been, he looked on

her as a stranger in blood. And this speech of his had just recognized
her as one of the family.

And was not her answer the worthy crown of eleven years of her noble
life? Her every action since she came of age had borne the stamp of

the purest devotion; love for her brother was a sort of religion with
her.

"I shall die Mlle. d'Esgrignon," she said simply, turning to the
notary.

"For you there could be no fairer title," returned Chesnel, meaning to
convey a compliment. Poor Mlle. d'Esgrignon reddened.

"You have blundered, Chesnel," said the Marquis, flattered by the
steward's words, but vexed that his sister had been hurt. "A

d'Esgrignon may marry a Montmorency; their descent is not so pure as
ours. The d'Esgrignons bear or, two bends, gules," he continued, "and

nothing during nine hundred years has changed their scutcheon; as it
was at first, so it is to-day. Hence our device, Cil est nostre, taken

at a tournament in the reign of Philip Augustus, with the supporters,
a knight in armor or on the right, and a lion gules on the left."

"I do not remember that any woman I have ever met has struck my
imagination as Mlle. d'Esgrignon did," said Emile Blondet, to whom

contemporary literature is indebted for this history among other
things. "Truth to tell, I was a boy, a mere child at the time, and

perhaps my memory-pictures of her owe something of their vivid color
to a boy's natural turn for the marvelous.

"If I was playing with other children on the Parade, and she came to
walk there with her nephew Victurnien, the sight of her in the

distance thrilled me with very much the effect of galvanism on a dead
body. Child as I was, I felt as though new life had been given me.

"Mlle. Armande had hair of tawny gold; there was a delicate fine down
on her cheek, with a silver gleam upon it which I loved to catch,

putting myself so that I could see the outlines of her face lit up by
the daylight, and feel the fascination of those dreamyemerald eyes,

which sent a flash of fire through me whenever they fell upon my face.
I used to pretend to roll on the grass before her in our games, only

to try to reach her little feet, and admire them on a closer view. The
soft whiteness of her skin, her delicate features, the clearly cut

lines of her forehead, the grace of her slender figure, took me with a
sense of surprise, while as yet I did not know that her shape was

graceful, nor her brows beautiful, nor the outline of her face a
perfect oval. I admired as children pray at that age, without too

clearly understanding why they pray. When my piercing gaze attracted
her notice, when she asked me (in that musical voice of hers, with

more volume in it, as it seemed to me, than all other voices), 'What
are you doing little one? Why do you look at me?'--I used to come

nearer and wriggle and bite my finger-nails, and redden and say, 'I do
not know.' And if she chanced to stroke my hair with her white hand,

and ask me how old I was, I would run away and call from a distance,
'Eleven!'

Every princess and fairy of my visions, as I read the Arabian Nights,
looked and walked like Mlle. d'Esgrignon; and afterwards, when my

drawing-master gave me heads from the antique to copy, I noticed that
their hair was braided like Mlle. d'Esgrignon's. Still later, when the

foolish fancies had vanished one by one, Mlle. Armande remained
vaguely in my memory as a type; that Mlle. Armande for whom men made

way respectfully, following the tall brown-robed figure with their
eyes along the Parade and out of sight. Her exquisitelygraceful form,

the rounded curves sometimes revealed by a chance gust of wind, and
always visible to my eyes in spite of the ample folds of stuff,

revisited my young man's dreams. Later yet, when I came to think
seriously over certain mysteries of human thought, it seemed to me

that the feeling of reverence was first inspired in me by something
expressed in Mlle. d'Esgrignon's face and bearing. The wonderful calm

of her face, the suppressed passion in it, the dignity of her
movements, the saintly life of duties fulfilled,--all this touched and

awed me. Children are more susceptible than people imagine to the
subtle influences of ideas; they never make game of real dignity; they

feel the charm of real graciousness, and beauty attracts them, for
childhood itself is beautiful, and there are mysterious ties between

things of the same nature.
"Mlle. d'Esgrignon was one of my religions. To this day I can never

climb the staircase of some old manor-house but my foolish imagination
must needs picture Mlle. Armande standing there, like the spirit of

feudalism. I can never read old chronicles but she appears before my
eyes in the shape of some famous woman of old times; she is Agnes

Sorel, Marie Touchet, Gabrielle; and I lend her all the love that was
lost in her heart, all the love that she never expressed. The angel

shape seen in glimpses through the haze of childish fancies visits me
now sometimes across the mists of dreams."

Keep this portrait in mind; it is a faithful picture and sketch of
character. Mlle. d'Esgrignon is one of the most instructive figures in

this story; she affords an example of the mischief that may be done by
the purest goodness for lack of intelligence.

Two-thirds of the emigres returned to France during 1804 and 1805, and
almost every exile from the Marquis d'Esgrignon's province came back

to the land of his fathers. There were certainly defections. Men of
good birth entered the service of Napoleon, and went into the army or

held places at the Imperial court, and others made alliances with the
upstart families. All those who cast in their lots with the Empire

retrieved their fortunes and recovered their estates, thanks to the
Emperor's munificence; and these for the most part went to Paris and

stayed there. But some eight or nine families still remained true to
the proscribed noblesse and loyal to the fallen monarchy. The La

Roche-Guyons, Nouastres, Verneuils, Casterans, Troisvilles, and the
rest were some of them rich, some of them poor; but money, more or

less, scarcely counted for anything among them. They took an
antiquarian view of themselves; for them the age and preservation of

the pedigree was the one all-important matter; precisely as, for an
amateur, the weight of metal in a coin is a small matter in comparison

with clean lettering, a flawless stamp, and high antiquity. Of these
families, the Marquis d'Esgrignon was the acknowledged head. His house

became their cenacle. There His Majesty, Emperor and King, was never
anything but "M. de Bonaparte"; there "the King" meant Louis XVIII.,

then at Mittau; there the Department was still the Province, and the
prefecture the intendance.

The Marquis was honored among them for his admirablebehavior, his
loyalty as a noble, his undaunted courage; even as he was respected