back La Baudraye out of a feeling of vanity and
imaginary pride, quite intelligible in a sheriff's grandson, though
under the consulate his prospects were but slender; all the more so,
indeed, because the ex-farmer-general had small hopes of his heir's
perpetuating the new race of La Baudraye.

Jean Athanase Polydore Milaud de la Baudraye, his only son, more than
delicate from his birth, was very evidently the child of a man whose
constitution had early been exhausted by the excesses in which rich men
indulge, who then marry at the first stage of premature old age, and
thus bring degeneracy into the highest circles of society. During the
years of the emigration Madame de la Baudraye, a girl of no fortune,
chosen for her noble birth, had patiently reared this sallow, sickly
boy, for whom she had the devoted love mothers feel for such changeling
creatures. Her death--she was a Casteran de la Tour--contributed to
bring about Monsieur de la Baudraye's return to France.

This Lucullus of the Milauds, when he died, left his son the fief,
stripped indeed of its fines and dues, but graced with weathercocks
bearing his coat-of-arms, a thousand louis-d'or--in 1802 a considerable
sum of money--and certain receipts for claims on very distinguished
_emigres_ enclosed in a pocketbook full of verses, with this inscription
on the wrapper, _Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas_.

Young La Baudraye did not die, but he owed his life to habits of
monastic strictness; to the economy of action which Fontenelle preached
as the religion of the invalid; and, above all, to the air of Sancerre
and the influence of its fine elevation, whence a panorama over the
valley of the Loire may be seen extending for forty leagues.

From 1802 to 1815 young La Baudraye added several plots to his
vineyards, and devoted himself to the culture of the vine. The
Restoration seemed to him at first so insecure that he dared not go to
Paris to claim his debts; but after Napoleon's death he tried to
turn his father's collection of autographs into money, though not
understanding the deep philosophy which had thus mixed up I O U's and
copies of verses. But the winegrower lost so much time in impressing his
identity on the Duke of Navarreins "and others," as he phrased it,
that he came back to Sancerre, to his beloved vintage, without having
obtained anything but offers of service.

The Restoration had raised the nobility to such a degree of lustre as
made La Baudraye