under Napoleon, the sole heir of this unhappy family. In my
eyes, monsieur, the rights of the Jeanrenauds were clear. To establish a
prescriptive right is it not necessary that there should have been some
possibility of proceeding against those who are in the enjoyment of it?
To whom could these refugees have appealed? Their Court of Justice was
on high, or rather, monsieur, it was here," and the Marquis struck his
hand on his heart. "I did not choose that my children should be able to
think of me as I have thought of my father and of my ancestors. I aim at
leaving them an unblemished inheritance and escutcheon. I did not choose
that nobility should be a lie in my person. And, after all,
politically speaking, ought those emigres who are now appealing
against revolutionary confiscations, to keep the property derived from
antecedent confiscations by positive crimes?

"I found in M. Jeanrenaud and his mother the most perverse honesty; to
hear them you would suppose that they were robbing me. In spite of all
I could say, they will accept no more than the value of the lands at
the time when the King bestowed them on my family. The price was settled
between us at the sum of eleven hundred thousand francs, which I was
to pay at my convenience and without interest. To achieve this I had
to forego my income for a long time. And then, monsieur, began the
destruction of some illusions I had allowed myself as to Madame
d'Espard's character. When I proposed to her that we should leave Paris
and go into the country, where we could live respected on half of her
income, and so more rapidly complete a restitution of which I spoke to
her without going into the more serious details, Madame d'Espard treated
me as a madman. I then understood my wife's real character. She would
have approved of my grandfather's conduct without a scruple, and have
laughed at the Huguenots. Terrified by her coldness, and her little
affection for her children, whom she abandoned to me without regret,
I determined to leave her the command of her fortune, after paying our
common debts. It was no business of hers, as she told me, to pay for
my follies. As I then had not enough to live on and pay for my sons'
education, I determined to educate them myself, to make them gentlemen
and men of feeling. By investing my money in the funds I have been
enabled to pay off my obligation sooner than I had dared to hope, for
I took advantage of the opportunities afforded by the