e baton of a Marshal of
France. Love, restrained, greater and nobler than the ties that were
made and unmade so easily in those days, was consecrated coldly by the
hands of death. On the battlefield of Wagram a shell shattered the
only record of Mme. de Bargeton's young beauty, a portrait worn on the
heart of the Marquis of Cante-Croix. For long afterwards she wept for
the young soldier, the colonel in his second campaign, for the heart
hot with love and glory that set a letter from Nais above Imperial
favor. The pain of those days cast a veil of sadness over her face, a
shadow that only vanished at the terrible age when a woman first
discovers with dismay that the best years of her life are over, and
she has had no joy of them; when she sees her roses wither, and the
longing for love is revived again with the desire to linger yet for a
little on the last smiles of youth. Her nobler qualities dealt so many
wounds to her soul at the moment when the cold of the provinces seized
upon her. She would have died of grief like the ermine if by chance
she had been sullied by contact with those men whose thoughts are bent
on winning a few sous nightly at cards after a good dinner; pride
saved her from the shabby love intrigues of the provinces. A woman so
much above the level of those about her, forced to decide between the
emptiness of the men whom she meets and the emptiness of her own life,
can make but one choice; marriage and society became a cloister for
Anais. She lived by poetry as the Carmelite lives by religion. All the
famous foreign books published in France for the first time between
1815 and 1821, the great essayists, M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre
(those two eagles of thought)--all the lighter French literature, in
short, that appeared during that sudden outburst of first vigorous
growth might bring delight into her solitary life, but not flexibility
of mind or body. She stood strong and straight like some forest tree,
lightning-blasted but still erect. Her dignity became a stilted
manner, her social supremacy led her into affectation and sentimental
over-refinements; she queened it with her foibles, after the usual
fashion of those who allow their courtiers to adore them.

This was Mme. de Bargeton's past life, a dreary chronicle which must
be given if Lucien's position with regard to the lady is to be
comprehensible. Lucien's introduction came about oddly enough. In the
previous winter a newcomer had brought some