ing all they
can to vilify the noblesse? Some things a Navarreins cannot do
without failing in duty to his house. You would not be alone in your
dishonor----"

"Come, come!" said the Princess. "Dishonor? Do not make such a fuss
about the journey of an empty carriage, children, and leave me alone
with Antoinette. All three of you come and dine with me. I will
undertake to arrange matters suitably. You men understand nothing;
you are beginning to talk sourly already, and I have no wish to see a
quarrel between you and my dear child. Do me the pleasure to go."

The three gentlemen probably guessed the Princess's intentions; they
took their leave. M. de Navarreins kissed his daughter on the forehead
with, "Come, be good, dear child. It is not too late yet if you choose."

"Couldn't we find some good fellow in the family to pick a quarrel with
this Montriveau?" said the Vidame, as they went downstairs.

When the two women were alone, the Princess beckoned her niece to a
little low chair by her side.

"My pearl," said she, "in this world below, I know nothing worse
calumniated than God and the eighteenth century; for as I look back over
my own young days, I do not recollect that a single duchess trampled the
proprieties underfoot as you have just done. Novelists and scribblers
brought the reign of Louis XV into disrepute. Do not believe them. The
du Barry, my dear, was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more
agreeable woman of the two. In my time a woman could keep her dignity
among her gallantries. Indiscretion was the ruin of us, and the
beginning of all the mischief. The philosophists--the nobodies whom we
admitted into our salons--had no more gratitude or sense of decency than
to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us one and all, and to
rail against the age by way of a return for our kindness. The people are
not in a position to judge of anything whatsoever; they looked at the
facts, not at the form. But the men and women of those times, my heart,
were quite as remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy. Not one
of your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are called, never
a one of your men in yellow kid gloves and trousers that disguise the
poverty of their legs, would cross Europe in the dress of a travelling
hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of Modena, and to shut himself up
in the dressing-room of the Regent's daughter at the risk of his life.
Not one of your little consumpti