from the terrace to meet her. Long before he arrived at the garden gate,
his son's arms were around his neck.

"Are you quite well, Edouard?"

"Oh yes, perfectly."

"And your mother?"

"Quite well too. She is behind, in as great a hurry to meet you as I am.
But she can't run as I do, and you must go half-way."

"Whom have you brought with you?"

"A gentleman from Paris."

"From Paris?"

"Yes, a Monsieur Derues. But mamma will tell you all about that. Here
she is."

The cure and the monk arrived just as Monsieur de Lamotte folded his
wife in his arms. Although she had passed her fortieth year, she was
still beautiful enough to justify her husband's eulogism. A moderate
plumpness had preserved the freshness and softness of her skin; her
smile was charming, and her large blue eyes expressed both gentleness
and goodness. Seen beside this smiling and serene countenance, the
appearance of the stranger was downright repulsive, and Monsieur de
Lamotte could hardly repress a start of disagreeable surprise at the
pitiful and sordid aspect of this diminutive person, who stood apart,
looking overwhelmed by conscious inferiority. He was still more
astonished when he saw his son take him by the hand with friendly
kindness, and heard him say--

"Will you come with me, my friend? We will follow my father and mother."

Madame de Lamotte, having greeted the cure, looked at the monk, who was
a stranger to her. A word or two explained matters, and she took her
husband's arm, declining to answer any questions until she reached the
louse, and laughing at his curiosity.

Pierre-Etienne de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, one of the king's
equerries, seigneur of Grange-Flandre, Valperfond, etc., had married
Marie-Francoise Perier in 1760. Their fortune resembled many others of
that period: it was more nominal than actual, more showy than solid. Not
that the husband and wife had any cause for self-reproach, or that their
estates had suffered from dissipation; unstained by the corrupt manners
of the period, their union had been a model of sincere affection,
of domestic virtue and mutual confidence. Marie-Francoise was quite
beautiful enough to have made a sensation in society, but she renounced
it of her own accord, in order to devote herself to the duties of a wife
and mother. The only serious grief she and her husband had experienced
was the loss of two young children. Edouard, though delicate from his
birth, had nevertheless passed t