ness; and then, years wear
away the angles, and the softening which comes with time had come to
her. She was melancholy with an obscure sadness of which she did not
herself know the secret. There breathed from her whole person the stupor
of a life that was finished, and which had never had a beginning.

She kept house for her father. M. Gillenormand had his daughter near
him, as we have seen that Monseigneur Bienvenu had his sister with him.
These households comprised of an old man and an old spinster are not
rare, and always have the touching aspect of two weaknesses leaning on
each other for support.

There was also in this house, between this elderly spinster and this
old man, a child, a little boy, who was always trembling and mute in the
presence of M. Gillenormand. M. Gillenormand never addressed this child
except in a severe voice, and sometimes, with uplifted cane: "Here, sir!
rascal, scoundrel, come here!--Answer me, you scamp! Just let me see
you, you good-for-nothing!" etc., etc. He idolized him.

This was his grandson. We shall meet with this child again later on.

BOOK THIRD.--THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON

CHAPTER I--AN ANCIENT SALON

When M. Gillenormand lived in the Rue Servandoni, he had frequented
many very good and very aristocratic salons. Although a bourgeois, M.
Gillenormand was received in society. As he had a double measure of wit,
in the first place, that which was born with him, and secondly, that
which was attributed to him, he was even sought out and made much of. He
never went anywhere except on condition of being the chief person there.
There are people who will have influence at any price, and who will have
other people busy themselves over them; when they cannot be oracles,
they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this nature; his domination
in the Royalist salons which he frequented cost his self-respect
nothing. He was an oracle everywhere. It had happened to him to hold his
own against M. de Bonald, and even against M. Bengy-Puy-Vallee.

About 1817, he invariably passed two afternoons a week in a house in
his own neighborhood, in the Rue Ferou, with Madame la Baronne de T.,
a worthy and respectable person, whose husband had been Ambassador of
France to Berlin under Louis XVI. Baron de T., who, during his lifetime,
had gone very passionately into ecstasies and magnetic visions, had died
bankrupt, during the emigration, leaving, as his entire fortune,
some very cu