f the elder branch. The
ducal house bears gules, three broad axes or in fess, with the famous
motto: Caveo non timeo, which epitomizes the history of the family.

The coat of the Vicomtes de Grandlieu is the same quartered with that
of Navarreins: gules, a fess crenelated or, surmounted by a knight's
helmet, with the motto: Grands faits, grand lieu. The present
Viscountess, widowed in 1813, has a son and a daughter. Though she
returned from the Emigration almost ruined, she recovered a considerable
fortune by the zealous aid of Derville the lawyer.

The Duc and Duchesse de Grandlieu, on coming home in 1804, were the
object of the Emperor's advances; indeed, Napoleon, seeing them come to
his court, restored to them all of the Grandlieu estates that had been
confiscated to the nation, to the amount of about forty thousand francs
a year. Of all the great nobles of the Faubourg Saint-Germain
who allowed themselves to be won over by Napoleon, this Duke and
Duchess--she was an Ajuda of the senior branch, and connected with the
Braganzas--were the only family who afterwards never disowned him and
his liberality. When the Faubourg Saint-Germain remembered this as a
crime against the Grandlieus, Louis XVIII. respected them for it; but
perhaps his only object was to annoy _Monsieur_.

A marriage was considered likely between the young Vicomte de Grandlieu
and Marie-Athenais, the Duke's youngest daughter, now nine years old.
Sabine, the youngest but one, married the Baron du Guenic after
the revolution of July 1830; Josephine, the third, became Madame
d'Ajuda-Pinto after the death of the Marquis' first wife, Mademoiselle
de Rochefide, or Rochegude. The eldest had taken the veil in 1822. The
second, Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique, at this time seven-and-twenty
years of age, was deeply in love with Lucien de Rubempre. It need not be
asked whether the Duc de Grandlieu's mansion, one of the finest in
the Rue Saint-Dominique, did not exert a thousand spells over Lucien's
imagination. Every time the heavy gate turned on its hinges to admit his
cab, he experienced the gratified vanity to which Mirabeau confessed.

"Though my father was a mere druggist at l'Houmeau, I may enter here!"
This was his thought.

And, indeed, he would have committed far worse crimes than allying
himself with a forger to preserve his right to mount the steps of that
entrance, to hear himself announced, "Monsieur de Rubempre" at the door
of the fine Louis