ctions are applicable to Julie's domestic life.

Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d'Aiglemont. He was
one colonel among many, an efficient orderly staff-officer, as good a
man as you could find for a dangerous mission, as unfit as well could
be for an important command. D'Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing
soldier such as the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess usually
calls "a good fellow." The Restoration gave him back his title of
Marquis, and did not find him ungrateful; he followed the Bourbons into
exile at Ghent, a piece of logical loyalty which falsified the horoscope
drawn for him by his late father-in-law, who predicted that Victor would
remain a colonel all his life. After the Hundred Days he received the
appointment of Lieutenant-General, and for the second time became a
marquis; but it was M. d'Aiglemont's ambition to be a peer of France. He
adopted, therefore, the maxims and the politics of the _Conservateur_,
cloaked himself in dissimulation which hid nothing (there being nothing
to hide), cultivated gravity of countenance and the art of asking
questions and saying little, and was taken for a man of profound wisdom.
Nothing drew him from his intrenchments behind the forms of politeness;
he laid in a provision of formulas, and made lavish use of his stock of
the catch-words coined at need in Paris to give fools the small change
for the ore of great ideas and events. Among men of the world he was
reputed a man of taste and discernment; and as a bigoted upholder of
aristocratic opinions he was held up for a noble character. If by chance
he slipped now and again into his old light-heartedness or levity,
others were ready to discover an undercurrent of diplomatic intention
beneath his inanity and silliness. "Oh! he only says exactly as much as
he means to say," thought these excellent people.

So d'Aiglemont's defects and good qualities stood him alike in good
stead. He did nothing to forfeit a high military reputation gained by
his dashing courage, for he had never been a commander-in-chief. Great
thoughts surely were engraven upon that manly aristocratic countenance,
which imposed upon every one but his own wife. And when everybody else
believed in the Marquis d'Aiglemont's imaginary talents, the Marquis
persuaded himself before he had done that he was one of the most
remarkable men at Court, where, thanks to his purely external
qualifications, he was in favor and taken at his o