own household; husband
and children had alike gone over to this stranger. The duchess
wrote pathetic letters to her husband, pleading her own affection
for him, and her claims as a wife and a mother. These letters no
doubt exasperated the duke, but we read them with deep pity for
her whose heart they lay bare.

It is to be understood that there was apparently no scandal--that
is, scandal in the usual sense--in the relations between the duke
and Mademoiselle de Luzy. She had simply bewitched a weak man who
had grown tired of his wife, and had cast the same spell over his
children; and she had not the superiority of character which would
have led her to throw up a lucrative situation because she was
making a wife and mother (whom doubtless she considered very
unreasonable) extremely unhappy.

At last things came to such a pass that Madame de Praslin appealed
to her father, insisting on a legal separation from her husband.
The marshal intervened, and the affair was compromised. Mademoiselle
de Luzy was to be honorably discharged, and the duchess was to
renounce her project of separation. Mademoiselle de Luzy therefore
gave up her situation, and went to board in a _pension_ in Paris
with her old schoolmistress. Madame de Praslin went to her country
house, the magnificent Chateau de Vaux, where she herself undertook
the education of her children; but in their estimation she by no
means replaced Mademoiselle de Luzy, whom from time to time they
visited in company with their father.

In the middle of the summer of 1847 it was arranged that the whole
family should go to the seaside, and they came up to Paris to pass
one night in the Faubourg Saint-Honore at the Hotel Sebastiani.
Like most French establishments, the Hotel Sebastiani was divided
between the marshal and his daughter, the old marshal occupying one
floor during the winter, the duke and duchess, with their family,
the one above it, while the servants of both establishments had
their sleeping-rooms under the roof. The house was of gray stone,
standing back in a yard; the French call such a situation _entre
cour et jardin_. The duke had been in Paris several times during the
previous week, and had occupied his own rooms, where the concierge
and his wife--the only servants left in the house--had remarked
that he seemed very busy.

It was afterwards reported in the neighborhood, but I do not think
the circumstance was ever officially brought out, that the police
f