eason, if _Sammy_ was not there,
do you remember the dry plums they gave us for dessert? There is plenty
in the orchard and the kitchen garden, but everything is sent to market
at Blois or Vendome. It runs in her blood, you know. Her father, the
Marshal, was famous for it at the Court of Louis Philippe; and it was
something to be thought stingy at the Court of Louis Philippe! These
great Corsican families are all alike; nothing but meanness and
pretension! They will eat chestnuts, such as the pigs would not touch,
off plate with their arms on it. And as for the Duchess--why, she makes
her steward account to her in person! They take the meat up to her every
morning; and every evening (this is from a person who knows), when
she has gone to her grand bed with the lace, at that tender moment she
balances her books!'

Madame Astier was nearly breathless. Her small voice grew sharp and
shrill, like the cry of a sea-bird from the masthead. Meanwhile Paul,
amused at first, had begun to listen impatiently, with his thoughts
elsewhere. 'I am off,' said he abruptly. 'I have a breakfast with some
business people--very important.'

'An order?'

'No, not architect's business this time.'

She wanted him to satisfy her curiosity, but he went on, 'Not now;
another time; it's not settled.' And finally, as he gave his mother a
little kiss, he whispered in her ear, 'All the same, do not forget my
four hundred.'

But for this grown-up son, who was a secret cause of division, the
Astier-Rehu would have had a happy household, as the world, and in
particular the Academic world, measures household happiness. After
thirty years their mutual sentiments remained the same, kept beneath the
snow at the temperature of what gardeners call a 'cold-bed.' When, about
'50, Professor Astier, after brilliant successes at the Institute, sued
for the hand of Mademoiselle Adelaide Rehu, who at that time lived
with her grandfather at the Palais Mazarin, it was not the delicate and
slender beauty of his betrothed, it was not the bloom of her 'Aurora'
face, which were the real attractions for him. Neither was it her
fortune. For the parents of Mademoiselle Adelaide, who died suddenly
of cholera, had left her but little; and the grandfather, a Creole from
Martinique, an old beau of the time of the Directory, a gambler, a
free liver, great in practical jokes and in duels, declared loudly and
repeatedly that he should not add a penny to her slender portion.