nth of August, she lost her regard for kings; but she detested the
mob. She desired equality and she held parvenus in horror. She was a
republican and an aristocrat, combined scepticism with prejudice, the
horrors of '93, which she saw, with the vague and noble theories of
humanity which surrounded her cradle.

Her external qualities were altogether masculine. She had the sharp
voice, the freedom of speech, the unruly tongue of the old woman of the
eighteenth century, heightened by an accent suggestive of the common
people, a mannish, highly colored style of elocution peculiar to
herself, rising above modesty in the choice of words and fearless in
calling things baldly by their plain names.

Meanwhile, the years rolled on, sweeping away the Restoration and the
monarchy of Louis-Philippe. She saw all those whom she had loved go
from her one by one, all her family take the road to the cemetery. She
was left quite alone, and she marveled and was grieved that death should
forget her, who would have offered so little resistance, for she was
already leaning over the grave and was obliged to force her heart down
to the level of the little children brought to her by the sons and
daughters of the friends whom she had lost. Her brother was dead. Her
dear _chick_ was no more. The _chick's_ sister-in-law alone was left to
her. But hers was a life that hung trembling in the balance, ready to
fly away. Crushed by the death of a child for whom she had waited for
years, the poor woman was dying of consumption. Mademoiselle de
Varandeuil was in her bedroom every day, from noon until six o'clock,
for four years. She lived by her side all that time, in the close
atmosphere and the odor of constant fumigations. She did not allow
herself to be kept away for one hour by her own gout and rheumatism, but
gave her time and her life to the peaceful last hours of that dying
woman, whose eyes were fixed upon heaven, where her dead children
awaited her. And when, in the cemetery, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had
turned aside the shroud to kiss the dead face for the last time, it
seemed to her as if there were no one near to her, as if she were all
alone upon the earth.

Thenceforth, yielding to the infirmities which she had no further reason
to shake off, she began to live the narrow, confined life of old people
who wear out their carpet in one spot only--never leaving her room,
reading but little because it tired her eyes, and passing most of her