uard Bertin.

Mme. de Chateaubriand's benevolence was official, which did not prevent
her from being a shrew at home. She founded a hospice--the Marie Therese
Infirmary--visited the poor, succoured the sick, superintended creches,
gave alms and prayed; at the same time she was harsh towards her
husband, her relatives, her friends, and her servants, and was
sour-tempered, stern, prudish, and a backbiter. God on high will take
these things into account.

She was ugly, pitted with small-pox, had an enormous mouth, little eyes,
was insignificant in appearance, and acted the _grande dame_, although
she was rather the wife of a great man than of a great lord. By
birth she was only the daughter of a ship-owner of Saint Malo. M. de
Chateaubriand feared, detested, and cajoled her.

She took advantage of this to make herself insupportable to mere human
beings. I have never known anybody less approachable or whose reception
of callers was more forbidding. I was a youth when I went to M. de
Chateaubriand's. She received me very badly, or rather she did not
receive me at all. I entered and bowed, but Mme. de Chateaubriand did
not see me. I was scared out of my wits. These terrors made my visits to
M. de Chateaubriand veritable nightmares which oppressed me for fifteen
days and fifteen nights in advance. Mme. de Chateaubriand hated whoever
visited her husband except through the doors that she opened. She had
not presented me to him, therefore she hated me. I was perfectly odious
to her, and she showed it.

Only once in my life and in hers did Mme. de Chateaubriand receive me
graciously. One day I entered, poor little devil, as usual most unhappy,
with affrighted schoolboy air and twisting my hat about in my hands.
M. de Chateaubriand at that time still lived at No. 27, Rue Saint
Dominique.

I was frightened at everything there, even at the servant who opened the
door. Well, I entered. Mme. de Chateaubriand was in the salon leading
to her husband's study. It was a summer morning. There was a ray of
sunshine on the floor, and what dazzled and astonished me much more than
the ray of sunshine was a smile on Mme. de Chateaubriand's face. "Is
that you, Monsieur Victor Hugo?" she said. I thought I was in the midst
of a dream of the _Arabian Nights_. Mme. de Chateaubriand smiling! Mme.
de Chateaubriand knowing my name, addressing me by name! It was the
first time that she had deigned to notice my existence. I bowed so low
that my head