existed at Cinq-Cygne conflicting interests and certain causes of
dissension. In the first place Durieu and his wife were jealous of
Catherine and Gothard, who lived in greater intimacy with their young
mistress, the idol of the household, than they did. Then the two
d'Hauteserres, encouraged by Mademoiselle Goujet and the abbe, wanted
their sons as well as the Simeuse brothers to take the oath and return
to this quiet life, instead of living miserably in foreign countries.
Laurence scouted the odious compromise and stood firmly for the
monarchy, militant and implacable. The four old people, anxious that
their present peaceful existence should not be risked, nor their spot
of refuge, saved from the furious waters of the revolutionary torrent,
lost, did their best to convert Laurence to their cautious views,
believing that her influence counted for much in the unwillingness of
their sons and the Simeuse twins to return to France. The superb disdain
with which she met the project frightened these poor people, who were
not mistaken in their fears that she was meditating what they called
knight-errantry. This jarring of opinion came to the surface after the
explosion of the infernal machine in the rue Saint-Nicaise, the first
royalist attempt against the conqueror of Marengo after his refusal
to treat with the house of Bourbon. The d'Hauteserres considered
it fortunate that Bonaparte escaped that danger, believing that the
republicans had instigated it. But Laurence wept with rage when she
heard he was safe. Her despair overcame her usual reticence, and she
vehemently complained that God had deserted the sons of Saint-Louis.

"I," she exclaimed, "I could have succeeded! Have we no right," she
added, seeing the stupefaction her words produced on the faces about
her, and addressing the abbe, "no right to attack the usurper by every
means in our power?"

"My child," replied the abbe, "the Church has been greatly blamed by
philosophers for declaring in former times that the same weapons might
be employed against usurpers which the usurpers themselves had employed
to succeed; but in these days the Church owes far too much to the First
Consul not to protect him against that maxim,--which, by the by, was due
to the Jesuits."

"So the Church abandons us!" she answered, gloomily.

From that day forth whenever the four old people talked of submitting
to the decrees of Providence, Laurence left the room. Of late, the abbe,
shrewd