to reckon up its obvious causes. Two children, dying in infancy,
had a double grave in a soul that could never forget. The exile of her
husband to Siberia was to such a woman a daily death. The failure of
the rich house of Wallenrod, and the death of her father, leaving his
coffers empty, was to Bettina, then uncertain about the fate of her
husband, a terrible blow. The joy of Charles's return came near killing
the tender German flower. After that the second fall of the Empire and
the proposed expatriation acted on her feelings like a renewed attack
of the same fever. At last, however, after ten years of continual
prosperity, the comforts of her house, which was the finest in Havre,
the dinners, balls, and fetes of a prosperous merchant, the splendors of
the villa Mignon, the unbounded respect and consideration enjoyed by her
husband, his absolute affection, giving her an unrivalled love in return
for her single-minded love for him,--all these things brought the woman
back to life. At the moment when her doubts and fears at last left her,
when she could look forward to the bright evening of her stormy life, a
hidden catastrophe, buried in the heart of the family, and of which we
shall presently make mention, came as the precursor of renewed trials.

In January, 1826, on the day when Havre had unanimously chosen Charles
Mignon as its deputy, three letters, arriving from New York, Paris, and
London, fell with the destruction of a hammer upon the crystal palace
of his prosperity. In an instant ruin like a vulture swooped down upon
their happiness, just as the cold fell in 1812 upon the grand army in
Russia. One night sufficed Charles Mignon to decide upon his course,
and he spent it in settling his accounts with Dumay. All he owned, not
excepting his furniture, would just suffice to pay his creditors.

"Havre shall never see me doing nothing," said the colonel to the
lieutenant. "Dumay, I take your sixty thousand francs at six per cent."

"Three, my colonel."

"At nothing, then," cried Mignon, peremptorily; "you shall have your
share in the profits of what I now undertake. The 'Modeste,' which is no
longer mine, sails to-morrow, and I sail in her. I commit to you my wife
and daughter. I shall not write. No news must be taken as good news."

Dumay, always subordinate, asked no questions of his colonel. "I think,"
he said to Latournelle with a knowing little glance, "that my colonel
has a plan laid out."

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