Marie Cecile Amelie Thirion, after three years of marriage, perceived
the blessing of Heaven upon it in the regularity of two auspicious
events--the births of a girl and a boy; but she prayed to be less
blessed in the future. A few more of such blessings would turn
straitened means into distress. M. Camusot's father's money was not
likely to come to them for a long time; and, rich as he was, he would
scarcely leave more than eight or ten thousand francs a year to each
of his children, four in number, for he had been married twice. And
besides, by the time that all "expectations," as matchmakers call them,
were realized, would not the magistrate have children of his own to
settle in life? Any one can imagine the situation for a little woman
with plenty of sense and determination, and Mme. Camusot was such a
woman. She did not refrain from meddling in matters judicial. She had
far too strong a sense of the gravity of a false step in her husband's
career.

She was the only child of an old servant of Louis XVIII., a valet
who had followed his master in his wanderings in Italy, Courland, and
England, till after the Restoration the King awarded him with the one
place that he could fill at Court, and made him usher by rotation to the
royal cabinet. So in Amelie's home there had been, as it were, a sort of
reflection of the Court. Thirion used to tell her about the lords,
and ministers, and great men whom he announced and introduced and saw
passing to and fro. The girl, brought up at the gates of the Tuileries,
had caught some tincture of the maxims practised there, and adopted the
dogma of passive obedience to authority. She had sagely judged that her
husband, by ranging himself on the side of the d'Esgrignons, would
find favor with Mme. la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and with two powerful
families on whose influence with the King the Sieur Thirion could depend
at an opportune moment. Camusot might get an appointment at the first
opportunity within the jurisdiction of Paris, and afterwards at Paris
itself. That promotion, dreamed of and longed for at every moment, was
certain to have a salary of six thousand francs attached to it, as well
as the alleviation of living in her own father's house, or under the
Camusots' roof, and all the advantages of a father's fortune on either
side. If the adage, "Out of sight is out of mind," holds good of
most women, it is particularly true where family feeling or royal or
ministerial patronag