f, "That rascal Hector must
think himself very lucky."

She suffered nevertheless; she gave herself up in secret to rages of
torment; but as soon as she saw Hector, she always remembered her twelve
years of perfect happiness, and could not find it in her to utter a word
of complaint. She would have been glad if the Baron would have taken her
into his confidence; but she never dared to let him see that she knew
of his kicking over the traces, out of respect for her husband. Such
an excess of delicacy is never met with but in those grand creatures,
daughters of the soil, whose instinct it is to take blows without ever
returning them; the blood of the early martyrs still lives in their
veins. Well-born women, their husbands' equals, feel the impulse to
annoy them, to mark the points of their tolerance, like points at
billiards, by some stinging word, partly in the spirit of diabolical
malice, and to secure the upper hand or the right of turning the tables.

The Baroness had an ardent admirer in her brother-in-law,
Lieutenant-General Hulot, the venerable Colonel of the Grenadiers of the
Imperial Infantry Guard, who was to have a Marshal's baton in his old
age. This veteran, after having served from 1830 to 1834 as Commandant
of the military division, including the departments of Brittany, the
scene of his exploits in 1799 and 1800, had come to settle in Paris near
his brother, for whom he had a fatherly affection.

This old soldier's heart was in sympathy with his sister-in-law; he
admired her as the noblest and saintliest of her sex. He had never
married, because he hoped to find a second Adeline, though he had vainly
sought for her through twenty campaigns in as many lands. To
maintain her place in the esteem of this blameless and spotless old
republican--of whom Napoleon had said, "That brave old Hulot is the most
obstinate republican, but he will never be false to me"--Adeline would
have endured griefs even greater than those that had just come upon
her. But the old soldier, seventy-two years of age, battered by thirty
campaigns, and wounded for the twenty-seventh time at Waterloo, was
Adeline's admirer, and not a "protector." The poor old Count, among
other infirmities, could only hear through a speaking trumpet.

So long as Baron Hulot d'Ervy was a fine man, his flirtations did not
damage his fortune; but when a man is fifty, the Graces claim payment.
At that age love becomes vice; insensate vanities come into play