ho, out of gratitude for his
instructions, promised to obtain for him a release in full of all claims
from Madame Laguerre, who by this time was terrified at the Revolution.
Gaubertin's father, the attorney-general of the department, henceforth
protected the timid woman. This provincial Fouquier-Tinville raised a
false alarm of danger in the mind of the opera-divinity on the ground
of her former relations to the aristocracy, so as to give his son
the equally false credit of saving her life; on the strength of
which Gaubertin the younger obtained very easily the release of his
predecessor. Mademoiselle Laguerre then made Francois Gaubertin her
prime minister, as much through policy as from gratitude. The late
steward had not spoiled her. He sent her, every year, about thirty
thousand francs, though Les Aigues brought in at that time at least
forty thousand. The unsuspecting opera-singer was therefore much
delighted when the new steward Gaubertin promised her thirty-six
thousand.

To explain the present fortune of the land-steward of Les Aigues
before the judgment-seat of probability, it is necessary to state its
beginnings. Pushed by his father's influence, he became mayor of Blangy.
Thus he was able, contrary to law, to make the debtors pay in coin,
by "terrorizing" (a phrase of the day) such of them as might, in his
opinion, be subjected to the crushing demands of the Republic. He
himself paid the citizens in assignats as long as the system of paper
money lasted,--a system which, if it did not make the nation prosperous,
at least made the fortunes of private individuals. From 1793 to 1795,
that is, for three years, Francois Gaubertin wrung one hundred and
fifty thousand francs out of Les Aigues, with which he speculated on the
stock-market in Paris. With her purse full of assignats Mademoiselle was
actually obliged to obtain ready money from her diamonds, now useless to
her. She gave them to Gaubertin, who sold them, and faithfully returned
to her their full price. This proof of honesty touched her heart;
henceforth she believed in Gaubertin as she did in Piccini.

In 1796, at the time of his marriage with the citoyenne Isaure Mouchon,
daughter of an old "conventional," a friend of his father, Gaubertin
possessed about three hundred and fifty thousand francs in money. As the
Directory seemed to him likely to last, he determined, before marrying,
to have the accounts of his five years' stewardship ratified by
Mademois