for a mere song. But he held nothing but convent
lands, and the monks will not come back; and then, as you have
already so far derogated as to become a lawyer, I cannot see why
we should shrink from a further concession to the prevalent ideas.
The girl will have three hundred thousand francs; I can give you a
hundred thousand; your mother's property must be worth fifty
thousand crowns, more or less; so if you choose to take a
judgeship, my dear son, you are quite in a position to become a
senator as much as any other man. My brother-in-law the Councillor
of State will not indeed lend you a helping-hand; still, as he is
not married, his property will some day be yours, and if you are
not senator by your own efforts, you will get it through him. Then
you will be perched high enough to look on at events. Farewell.
Yours affectionately."

So young Granville went to bed full of schemes, each fairer than the
last. Under the powerful protection of the High Chancellor, the Chief
Justice, and his mother's brother--one of the originators of the
Code--he was about to make a start in a coveted position before the
highest court of the Empire, and he already saw himself a member of the
bench whence Napoleon selected the chief functionaries of the realm.
He could also promise himself a fortune handsome enough to keep up
his rank, for which the slender income of five thousand francs from an
estate left him by his mother would be quite insufficient.

To crown his ambitious dreams with a vision of happiness, he called up
the guileless face of Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems, the companion of
his childhood. Until he came to boyhood his father and mother had
made no objection to his intimacy with their neighbor's pretty little
daughter; but when, during his brief holiday visits to Bayeux, his
parents, who prided themselves on their good birth, saw what friends the
young people were, they forbade his ever thinking of her. Thus for ten
years past Granville had only had occasional glimpses of the girl, whom
he still sometimes thought of as "his little wife." And in those
brief moments when they met free from the active watchfulness of their
families, they had scarcely exchanged a few vague civilities at the
church door or in the street. Their happiest days had been those when,
brought together by one of those country festivities known in Normandy
as _Assemblees_, they could steal a glance at each other from afar.