Misfortune had made this woman a good mother.  During the fifteen years of the Restoration she had amused herself far too much to think of her son; but on taking refuge in obscurity, this illustrious egoist bethought her that the maternal sentiment, developed to its extreme, might be an absolution for her past follies in the eyes of sensible persons, who pardon everything to a good mother.  She loved her son all the more because she had nothing else to love.  Georges de Maufrigneuse was, moreover, one of those children who flatter the vanities of a mother; and the princess had, accordingly, made all sorts of sacrifices for him.  She hired a stable and coach-house, above which he lived in a little entresol with three rooms looking on the street, and charmingly furnished; she had even borne several privations to keep a saddle-horse, a cab-horse, and a little groom for his use.  For herself, she had only her own maid, and as cook, a former kitchen-maid.  The duke’s groom had, therefore, rather a hard place.  Toby, formerly tiger to the “late” Beaudenord (such was the jesting term applied by the gay world to that ruined gentleman),—­Toby, who at twenty-five years of age was still considered only fourteen, was expected to groom the horses, clean the cabriolet, or the tilbury, and the harnesses, accompany his master, take care of the apartments, and be in the princess’s antechamber to announce a visitor, if, by chance, she happened to receive one.

When one thinks of what the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had been under the Restoration,—­one of the queens of Paris, a dazzling queen, whose luxurious existence equalled that of the richest women of fashion in London,—­there was something touching in the sight of her in that humble little abode in the rue de Miromesnil, a few steps away from her splendid mansion, which no amount of fortune had enabled her to keep, and which the hammer of speculators has since demolished.  The woman who thought she was scarcely well served by thirty servants, who possessed the most beautiful reception-rooms in all Paris, and the loveliest little private apartments, and who made them the scene of such delightful fetes, now lived in a small apartment of five rooms, —­an antechamber, dining-room, salon, one bed-chamber, and a dressing-room, with two women-servants only.

“Ah! she is devoted to her son,” said that clever creature, Madame d’Espard, “and devoted without ostentation; she is happy.  Who would ever have believed so frivolous a woman was capable of such persistent resolution!  Our good archbishop has, consequently, greatly encouraged her; he is most kind to her, and has just induced the old Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne to pay her a visit.”