chevalier of the Orders,
had left the court at the time of the emigration. Possessing a good deal
of property in the neighborhood of Carentan, she took refuge in that
town, hoping that the influence of the Terror would be little felt
there. This expectation, based on a knowledge of the region, was
well-founded. The Revolution committed but few ravages in Lower
Normandy. Though Madame de Dey had known none but the nobles of her own
caste when she visited her property in former years, she now felt it
advisable to open her house to the principle bourgeois of the town,
and to the new governmental authorities; trying to make them pleased
at obtaining her society, without arousing either hatred or jealousy.
Gracious and kind, gifted by nature with that inexpressible charm
which can please without having recourse to subserviency or to making
overtures, she succeeded in winning general esteem by an exquisite tact;
the sensitive warnings of which enabled her to follow the delicate
line along which she might satisfy the exactions of this mixed society,
without humiliating the touchy pride of the parvenus, or shocking that
of her own friends.

Then about thirty-eight years of age, she still preserved, not the fresh
plump beauty which distinguishes the daughters of Lower Normandy, but
a fragile and, so to speak, aristocratic beauty. Her features were
delicate and refined, her figure supple and easy. When she spoke, her
pale face lighted and seemed to acquire fresh life. Her large dark eyes
were full of affability and kindness, and yet their calm, religious
expression seemed to say that the springs of her existence were no
longer in her.

Married in the flower of her age to an old and jealous soldier,
the falseness of her position in the midst of a court noted for its
gallantry contributed much, no doubt, to draw a veil of melancholy over
a face where the charms and the vivacity of love must have shone in
earlier days. Obliged to repress the naive impulses and emotions of
a woman when she simply feels them instead of reflecting about them,
passion was still virgin in the depths of her heart. Her principal
attraction came, in fact, from this innate youth, which sometimes,
however, played her false, and gave to her ideas an innocent expression
of desire. Her manner and appearance commanded respect, but there was
always in her bearing, in her voice, a sort of looking forward to some
unknown future, as in girlhood. The most insensibl