was charitably cared for in some German hospital. His disease was an
inflammation of the mesenteric membrane, which is often fatal, and
is liable, even if cured, to change the constitution and produce
hypochondria. His love affairs, carefully buried out of sight and which
I alone discovered, were low-lived, and not only destroyed his health
but ruined his future.

After twelve years of great misery he made his way to France, under the
decree of the Emperor which permitted the return of the emigrants. As
the wretched wayfarer crossed the Rhine and saw the tower of Strasburg
against the evening sky, his strength gave way. "'France! France!' I
cried. 'I see France!'" (he said to me) "as a child cries 'Mother!' when
it is hurt." Born to wealth, he was now poor; made to command a regiment
or govern a province, he was now without authority and without a future;
constitutionally healthy and robust, he returned infirm and utterly worn
out. Without enough education to take part among men and affairs, now
broadened and enlarged by the march of events, necessarily without
influence of any kind, he lived despoiled of everything, of his moral
strength as well as his physical. Want of money made his name a burden.
His unalterable opinions, his antecedents with the army of Conde, his
trials, his recollections, his wasted health, gave him susceptibilities
which are but little spared in France, that land of jest and sarcasm.
Half dead he reached Maine, where, by some accident of the civil war,
the revolutionary government had forgotten to sell one of his farms of
considerable extent, which his farmer had held for him by giving out
that he himself was the owner of it.

When the Lenoncourt family, living at Givry, an estate not far from
this farm, heard of the arrival of the Comte de Mortsauf, the Duc de
Lenoncourt invited him to stay at Givry while a house was being prepared
for him. The Lenoncourt family were nobly generous to him, and with them
he remained some months, struggling to hide his sufferings during that
first period of rest. The Lenoncourts had themselves lost an immense
property. By birth Monsieur de Mortsauf was a suitable husband for their
daughter. Mademoiselle de Lenoncourt, instead of rejecting a marriage
with a feeble and worn-out man of thirty-five, seemed satisfied to
accept it. It gave her the opportunity of living with her aunt, the
Duchesse de Verneuil, sister of the Prince de Blamont-Chauvry, who was
like a m