e man would find
himself in love with her, and yet be restrained by a sort of respectful
fear, inspired by her courtly and polished manners. Her soul, naturally
noble, but strengthened by cruel trials, was far indeed from the common
run, and men did justice to it. Such a soul necessarily required a lofty
passion; and the affections of Madame de Dey were concentrated on a
single sentiment,--that of motherhood. The happiness and pleasure of
which her married life was deprived, she found in the passionate love
she bore her son. She loved him not only with the pure and deep devotion
of a mother, but with the coquetry of a mistress, and the jealousy of
a wife. She was miserable away from him, uneasy at his absence, could
never see him enough, and loved only through him and for him. To make
men understand the strength of this feeling, it suffices to add that
the son was not only the sole child of Madame de Dey, but also her last
relation, the only being in the world to whom the fears and hopes and
joys of her life could be naturally attached.

The late Comte de Dey was the last surviving scion of his family,
and she herself was the sole heiress of her own. Human interests and
projects combined, therefore, with the noblest deeds of the soul to
exalt in this mother's heart a sentiment that is always so strong in the
hearts of women. She had brought up this son with the utmost difficulty,
and with infinite pains, which rendered the youth still dearer to her;
a score of times the doctors had predicted his death, but, confident in
her own presentiments, her own unfailing hope, she had the happiness
of seeing him come safely through the perils of childhood, with a
constitution that was ever improving, in spite of the warnings of the
Faculty.

Thanks to her constant care, this son had grown and developed so much,
and so gracefully, that at twenty years of age, he was thought a most
elegant cavalier at Versailles. Madame de Dey possessed a happiness
which does not always crown the efforts and struggles of a mother.
Her son adored her; their souls understood each other with fraternal
sympathy. If they had not been bound by nature's ties, they would
instinctively have felt for each other that friendship of man to man,
which is so rarely to be met in this life. Appointed sub-lieutenant of
dragoons, at the age of eighteen, the young Comte de Dey had obeyed the
point of honor of the period by following the princes of the blood in
their