moiselle Cochet married the
brigadier of the gendarmerie of Soulanges, named Soudry, a handsome
man, forty-two years of age, who, ever since 1800 (in which year the
gendarmerie was formed) had come every day to Les Aigues to see the
waiting-maid, and dined with her at least three times a week at the
Gaubertins'.

During Madame's lifetime dinner was served to her and to her company
by themselves. Neither Cochet nor Gaubertin, in spite of their great
familiarity with the mistress, was ever admitted to her table; the
leading lady of the Academie Royale retained, to her last hour, her
sense of etiquette, her style of dress, her rouge and her heeled
slippers, her carriage, her servants, and the majesty of her deportment.
A divinity at the Opera, a divinity within her range of Parisian social
life, she continued a divinity in the country solitudes, where her
memory is still worshipped, and still holds its own against that of the
old monarchy in the minds of the "best society" of Soulanges.

Soudry, who had paid his addresses to Mademoiselle Cochet from the
time he first came into the neighborhood, owned the finest house in
Soulanges, an income of six thousand francs, and the prospect of a
retiring pension whenever he should quit the service. As soon as Cochet
became Madame Soudry she was treated with great consideration in the
town. Though she kept the strictest secrecy as to the amount of
her savings,--which were intrusted, like those of Gaubertin, to the
commissary of wine-merchants of the department in Paris, a certain
Leclercq, a native of Soulanges, to whom Gaubertin supplied funds as
sleeping partner in his business,--public opinion credited the former
waiting-maid with one of the largest fortunes in the little town of
twelve hundred inhabitants.

To the great astonishment of every one, Monsieur and Madame Soudry
acknowledged as legitimate, in their marriage contract, a natural son
of the gendarme, to whom, in future, Madame Soudry's fortune was to
descend. At the time when this son was legally supplied with a mother,
he had just ended his law studies in Paris and was about to enter into
practice, with the intention of fitting himself for the magistracy.

It is scarcely necessary to remark that a mutual understanding of
twenty years had produced the closest intimacy between the families of
Gaubertin and Soudry. Both reciprocally declared themselves, to the
end of their days, "urbi et orbi," to be the most upright an