r, however, envenomed the hatred which du Bousquier
already bore to the house of Esgrignon to such a degree that it made
him pitiless when the day of vengeance came. [See "The Gallery of
Antiquities."] Madame du Bousquier received orders never again to set
foot into that house. By way of reprisals upon the chevalier for the
trick thus played him, du Bousquier, who had just created the journal
called the "Courrier de l'Orne," caused the following notice to be
inserted in it:--

"Bonds to the amount of one thousand francs a year will be paid to
any person who can prove the existence of one Monsieur de
Pombreton before, during, or after the Emigration."

Although her marriage was essentially negative, Madame du Bousquier saw
some advantages in it: was it not better to interest herself in the
most remarkable man in the town than to live alone? Du Bousquier was
preferable to a dog, or cat, or those canaries that spinsters love. He
showed for his wife a sentiment more real and less selfish than that
which is felt by servants, confessors, and hopeful heirs. Later in life
she came to consider her husband as the instrument of divine wrath; for
she then saw innumerable sins in her former desires for marriage; she
regarded herself as justly punished for the sorrow she had brought on
Madame Granson, and for the hastened death of her uncle. Obedient
to that religion which commands us to kiss the rod with which the
punishment is inflicted, she praised her husband, and publicly approved
him. But in the confessional, or at night, when praying, she wept often,
imploring God's forgiveness for the apostasy of the man who thought the
contrary of what he professed, and who desired the destruction of the
aristocracy and the Church,--the two religions of the house of Cormon.

With all her feelings bruised and immolated within her, compelled by
duty to make her husband happy, attached to him by a certain indefinable
affection, born, perhaps, of habit, her life became one perpetual
contradiction. She had married a man whose conduct and opinions she
hated, but whom she was bound to care for with dutiful tenderness.
Often she walked with the angels when du Bousquier ate her preserves or
thought the dinner good. She watched to see that his slightest wish was
satisfied. If he tore off the cover of his newspaper and left it on a
table, instead of throwing it away, she would say:--

"Rene, leave that where it is; monsieur did not place it th