ntrived to render du Bousquier both ridiculous
and odious for a time; but ridicule ends by weakening; when all had
said their say about him, the gossip died out. Besides, at fifty-seven
years of age the dumb republican seemed to many people to have a right
to retire. This affair, however, envenomed the hatred which du
Bousquier already bore to the house of Esgrignon to such a degree that
it made him pitiless when the day of vengeance came. [See "The Gallery
of Antiquities."] Madame du Bousquier received orders never again to
set foot into that house. By way of reprisals upon the chevalier for
the trick thus played him, du Bousquier, who had just created the
journal called the "Courrier de l'Orne," caused the following notice
to be inserted in it:--

"Bonds to the amount of one thousand francs a year will be paid to
any person who can prove the existence of one Monsieur de
Pombreton before, during, or after the Emigration."

Although her marriage was essentially negative, Madame du Bousquier
saw some advantages in it: was it not better to interest herself in
the most remarkable man in the town than to live alone? Du Bousquier
was preferable to a dog, or cat, or those canaries that spinsters
love. He showed for his wife a sentiment more real and less selfish
than that which is felt by servants, confessors, and hopeful heirs.
Later in life she came to consider her husband as the instrument of
divine wrath; for she then saw innumerable sins in her former desires
for marriage; she regarded herself as justly punished for the sorrow
she had brought on Madame Granson, and for the hastened death of her
uncle. Obedient to that religion which commands us to kiss the rod
with which the punishment is inflicted, she praised her husband, and
publicly approved him. But in the confessional, or at night, when
praying, she wept often, imploring God's forgiveness for the apostasy
of the man who thought the contrary of what he professed, and who
desired the destruction of the aristocracy and the Church,--the two
religions of the house of Cormon.

With all her feelings bruised and immolated within her, compelled by
duty to make her husband happy, attached to him by a certain
indefinable affection, born, perhaps, of habit, her life became one
perpetual contradiction. She had married a man whose conduct and
opinions she hated, but whom she was bound to care for with dutiful
tenderness. Often she walked with the angels when du Bousquie