ege in ten. Then the
great man, by name the Abbe de Maronis, completed the education of
his pupil by making him study civilization under all its aspects: he
nourished him on his experience, led him little into churches, which
at that time were closed; introduced him sometimes behind the scenes of
theatres, more often into the houses of courtesans; he exhibited human
emotions to him one by one; taught him politics in the drawing-rooms,
where they simmered at the time, explained to him the machinery of
government, and endeavored out of attraction towards a fine nature,
deserted, yet rich in promise, virilely to replace a mother: is not the
Church the mother of orphans? The pupil was responsive to so much care.
The worthy priest died in 1812, a bishop, with the satisfaction of
having left in this world a child whose heart and mind were so well
moulded that he could outwit a man of forty. Who would have expected to
have found a heart of bronze, a brain of steel, beneath external traits
as seductive as ever the old painters, those naive artists, had given to
the serpent in the terrestrial paradise? Nor was that all. In addition,
the good-natured prelate had procured for the child of his choice
certain acquaintances in the best Parisian society, which might equal
in value, in the young man's hand, another hundred thousand invested
livres. In fine, this priest, vicious but politic, sceptical yet
learned, treacherous yet amiable, weak in appearance yet as vigorous
physically as intellectually, was so genuinely useful to his pupil, so
complacent to his vices, so fine a calculator of all kinds of strength,
so profound when it was needful to make some human reckoning, so
youthful at table, at Frascati, at--I know not where, that the grateful
Henri de Marsay was hardly moved at aught in 1814, except when he looked
at the portrait of his beloved bishop, the only personal possession
which the prelate had been able to bequeath him (admirable type of
the men whose genius will preserve the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman
Church, compromised for the moment by the feebleness of its recruits and
the decrepit age of its pontiffs; but if the church likes!).

The continental war prevented young De Marsay from knowing his real
father. It is doubtful whether he was aware of his name. A deserted
child, he was equally ignorant of Madame de Marsay. Naturally, he had
little regret for his putative father. As for Mademoiselle de Marsay,
his only moth