ontegnac at once for the sum of five hundred thousand francs. He
acquiesced readily in his wife's wish that this purchase and all others
connected with it should be in fulfilment of the clause of the marriage
contract relative to the investment of her dowry. Graslin was all the
more ready to do so because this act of justice cost him nothing, he
having doubled the original sum.

At this time, when Graslin was negotiating the purchase, the Navarreins
domains comprised the forest of Montegnac which contained about thirty
thousand acres of unused land, the ruins of the castle, the gardens,
park, and about five thousand acres of uncultivated land on the plain
beyond Montegnac. Graslin immediately bought other lands in order to
make himself master of the first peak in the chain of the Correzan
mountains on which the vast forest of Montegnac ended. Since the
imposition of taxes the Duc de Navarreins had never received more
than fifteen thousand francs per annum from this manor, once among the
richest tenures of the kingdom, the lands of which had escaped the sale
of "public domain" ordered by the Convention, on account probably of
their barrenness and the known difficulty of reclaiming them.

When the rector went at last to Madame Graslin's apartment, and saw the
woman noted for her piety and for her intellect of whom he had heard
speak, he could not restrain a gesture of amazement. Veronique had now
reached the third phase of her life, that in which she was to rise into
grandeur by the exercise of the highest virtues,--a phase in which she
became another woman. To the Little Virgin of Titian, hidden at eleven
years of age beneath a spotted mantle of small-pox, had succeeded a
beautiful woman, noble and passionate; and from that woman, now wrung by
inward sorrows, came forth a saint.

Her skin bore the yellow tinge which colors the austere faces of
abbesses who have been famous for their macerations. The attenuated
temples were almost golden. The lips had paled, the red of an opened
pomegranate was no longer on them, their color had changed to the pale
pink of a Bengal rose. At the corners of the eyes, close to the nose,
sorrows had made two shining tracks like mother-of-pearl, where tears
had flowed; tears which effaced the marks of small-pox and glazed the
skin. Curiosity was invincibly attracted to that pearly spot, where the
blue threads of the little veins throbbed precipitately, as though they
were swelled by an influ