wish to justify his ambitions by having an heir. This
happy result of matrimony he considered doubtful, or he would not so
long have postponed the step; however, finding himself still above
ground in 1823, at the age of forty-three, a length of years which no
doctor, astrologer, or midwife would have dared to promise him, he hoped
to earn the reward of his sober life. And yet his choice showed such a
lack of prudence in regard to his frail constitution, that the malicious
wit of a country town could not help thinking it must be the result of
some deep calculation.

Just at this time His Eminence, Monseigneur the Archbishop of Bourges,
had converted to the Catholic faith a young person, the daughter of one
of the citizen families, who were the first upholders of Calvinism, and
who, thanks to their obscurity or to some compromise with Heaven, had
escaped from the persecutions under Louis XIV. The Piedefers--a name
that was obviously one of the quaint nicknames assumed by the champions
of the Reformation--had set up as highly respectable cloth merchants.
But in the reign of Louis XVI., Abraham Piedefer fell into difficulties,
and at his death in 1786 left his two children in extreme poverty. One
of them, Tobie Piedefer, went out to the Indies, leaving the pittance
they had inherited to his elder brother. During the Revolution Moise
Piedefer bought up the nationalized land, pulled down abbeys and
churches with all the zeal of his ancestors, oddly enough, and married
a Catholic, the only daughter of a member of the Convention who had
perished on the scaffold. This ambitious Piedefer died in 1819, leaving
a little girl of remarkable beauty. This child, brought up in the
Calvinist faith, was named Dinah, in accordance with the custom in use
among the sect, of taking their Christian names from the Bible, so as to
have nothing in common with the Saints of the Roman Church.

Mademoiselle Dinah Piedefer was placed by her mother in one of the best
schools in Bourges, that kept by the Demoiselles Chamarolles, and was
soon as highly distinguished for the qualities of her mind as for her
beauty; but she found herself snubbed by girls of birth and fortune,
destined by-and-by to play a greater part in the world than a mere
plebeian, the daughter of a mother who was dependent on the settlement
of Piedefer's estate. Dinah, having raised herself for the moment above
her companions, now aimed at remaining on a level with them for the rest