so
many others if the Comte de Gondreville had not contrived to have his
name effaced from the ordinance and put on the retired list with a
pension, and the rank of colonel.

Madame Marion, _nee_ Giguet, had another brother who was colonel of
gendarmerie at Troyes, whom she followed to that town at an earlier
period. It was there that she married Monsieur Marion, receiver-general
of the Aube, who also had had a brother, the chief-justice of an
imperial court. While a mere barrister at Arcis this young man had
lent his name during the Terror to the famous Malin de l'Aube, the
representative of the people, in order to hold possession of the estate
of Gondreville. [See "An Historical Mystery."] Consequently, all the
support and influence of Malin, now become count and senator, was at
the service of the Marion family. The barrister's brother was made
receiver-general of the department, at a period when, far from having
forty applicants for one place, the government was fortunate in getting
any one to accept such a slippery office.

Marion, the receiver-general, inherited the fortune of his brother the
chief-justice, and Madame Marion that of her brother the colonel of
gendarmerie. In 1814, the receiver-general met with reverses. He died
when the Empire died; but his widow managed to gather fifteen thousand
francs a year from the wreck of his accumulated fortunes. The colonel of
gendarmerie had left his property to his sister on learning the marriage
of his brother the artillery officer to the daughter of a rich banker of
Hamburg. It is well known what a fancy all Europe had for the splendid
troopers of Napoleon!

In 1814, Madame Marion, half-ruined, returned to Arcis, her native
place, where she bought, on the Grande-Place, one of the finest houses
in the town. Accustomed to receive much company at Troyes, where the
receiver-general reigned supreme, she now opened her salon to the
notabilities of the liberal party in Arcis. A woman accustomed to the
advantages of salon royalty does not easily renounce them. Vanity is the
most tenacious of all habits.

Bonapartist, and afterwards a liberal--for, by the strangest of
metamorphoses, the soldiers of Napoleon became almost to a man
enamoured of the constitutional system--Colonel Giguet was, during the
Restoration, the natural president of the governing committee of Arcis,
which consisted of the notary Grevin, his son-in-law Beauvisage, and
Varlet junior, the chief physician