k of being, at the
Comte de Serizy's instigation, drafted into that noble regiment, with
the promise of promotion to quartermaster within a year. Chance had thus
placed the ex-clerk under the command of the son of the Comte de Serizy.

Madame Clapart, after languishing for some days, so keenly was she
affected by these catastrophes, became a victim to the remorse which
seizes upon many a mother whose conduct has been frail in her youth,
and who, in her old age, turns to repentance. She now considered herself
under a curse. She attributed the sorrows of her second marriage and the
misfortunes of her son to a just retribution by which God was compelling
her to expiate the errors and pleasures of her youth. This opinion soon
became a certainty in her mind. The poor woman went, for the first
time in forty years, to confess herself to the Abbe Gaudron, vicar of
Saint-Paul's, who led her into the practice of devotion. But so ill-used
and loving a soul as that of Madame Clapart's could never be anything
but simply pious. The Aspasia of the Directory wanted to expiate her
sins in order to draw down the blessing of God on the head of her poor
Oscar, and she henceforth vowed herself to works and deeds of the purest
piety. She believed she had won the attention of heaven when she saved
the life of Monsieur Clapart, who, thanks to her devotion, lived on to
torture her; but she chose to see, in the tyranny of that imbecile mind,
a trial inflicted by the hand of one who loveth while he chasteneth.

Oscar, meantime, behaved so well that in 1830 he was first sergeant
of the company of the Vicomte de Serizy, which gave him the rank of
sub-lieutenant of the line. Oscar Husson was by that time twenty-five
years old. As the Royal Guard, to which his regiment was attached, was
always in garrison in Paris, or within a circumference of thirty miles
around the capital, he came to see his mother from time to time, and
tell her his griefs; for he had the sense to see that he could never
become an officer as matters then were. At that time the cavalry grades
were all being taken up by the younger sons of noble families, and men
without the article to their names found promotion difficult. Oscar's
sole ambition was to leave the Guards and be appointed sub-lieutenant in
a regiment of the cavalry of the line. In the month of February, 1830,
Madame Clapart obtained this promotion for her son through the influence
of Madame la Dauphine, granted to the