nament, was thankful
to her for having, as it were, taken the veil, and cloistered herself
in her own home. This act of good taste was for her, more than for any
other woman, an immense sacrifice. Great deeds are always so keenly felt
in France that the princess gained, by her retreat, as much as she had
lost in public opinion in the days of her splendor.

She now saw only one of her old friends, the Marquise d'Espard, and even
to her she never went on festive occasions or to parties. The princess
and the marquise visited each other in the forenoons, with a certain
amount of secrecy. When the princess went to dine with her friend,
the marquise closed her doors. Madame d'Espard treated the princess
charmingly; she changed her box at the opera, leaving the first tier for
a baignoire on the ground-floor, so that Madame de Cadignan could come
to the theatre unseen, and depart incognito. Few women would have been
capable of a delicacy which deprived them of the pleasure of bearing in
their train a fallen rival, and of publicly being her benefactress. Thus
relieved of the necessity for costly toilets, the princess could enjoy
the theatre, whither she went in Madame d'Espard's carriage, which she
would never have accepted openly in the daytime. No one has ever
known Madame d'Espard's reasons for behaving thus to the Princesse de
Cadignan; but her conduct was admirable, and for a long time included a
number of little acts which, viewed single, seem mere trifles, but taken
in the mass become gigantic.

In 1832, three years had thrown a mantle of snow over the follies and
adventures of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and had whitened them so
thoroughly that it now required a serious effort of memory to recall
them. Of the queen once adored by so many courtiers, and whose follies
might have given a theme to a variety of novels, there remained a woman
still adorably beautiful, thirty-six years of age, but quite justified
in calling herself thirty, although she was the mother of Duc Georges
de Maufrigneuse, a young man of eighteen, handsome as Antinous, poor as
Job, who was expected to obtain great successes, and for whom his mother
desired, above all things, to find a rich wife. Perhaps this hope was
the secret of the intimacy she still kept up with the marquise, in whose
salon, which was one of the first in Paris, she might eventually be able
to choose among many heiresses for Georges' wife. The princess saw five
years between the