ntleman called M. de Marsay. This
faded and almost extinguished butterfly recognized the child as his own
in consideration of the life interest in a fund of a hundred thousand
francs definitively assigned to his putative son; a generosity which
did not cost Lord Dudley too dear. French funds were worth at that time
seventeen francs, fifty centimes. The old gentleman died without having
ever known his wife. Madame de Marsay subsequently married the Marquis
de Vordac, but before becoming a marquise she showed very little anxiety
as to her son and Lord Dudley. To begin with, the declaration of war
between France and England had separated the two lovers, and fidelity
at all costs was not, and never will be, the fashion of Paris. Then the
successes of the woman, elegant, pretty, universally adored, crushed in
the Parisienne the maternal sentiment. Lord Dudley was no more troubled
about his offspring than was the mother,--the speedy infidelity of a
young girl he had ardently loved gave him, perhaps, a sort of aversion
for all that issued from her. Moreover, fathers can, perhaps, only love
the children with whom they are fully acquainted, a social belief of the
utmost importance for the peace of families, which should be held by all
the celibate, proving as it does that paternity is a sentiment nourished
artificially by woman, custom, and the law.

Poor Henri de Marsay knew no other father than that one of the two who
was not compelled to be one. The paternity of M. de Marsay was naturally
most incomplete. In the natural order, it is but for a few fleeting
instants that children have a father, and M. de Marsay imitated nature.
The worthy man would not have sold his name had he been free from
vices. Thus he squandered without remorse in gambling hells, and drank
elsewhere, the few dividends which the National Treasury paid to
its bondholders. Then he handed over the child to an aged sister, a
Demoiselle de Marsay, who took much care of him, and provided him, out
of the meagre sum allowed by her brother, with a tutor, an abbe without
a farthing, who took the measure of the youth's future, and determined
to pay himself out of the hundred thousand livres for the care given to
his pupil, for whom he conceived an affection. As chance had it, this
tutor was a true priest, one of those ecclesiastics cut out to become
cardinals in France, or Borgias beneath the tiara. He taught the child
in three years what he might have learned at coll