Tears seemed to start in Madame du Bousquier’s eyes.

“I have heard it said that you were the one to blame in the matter, and that you feared the dangers of a pregnancy,” said the chevalier.

“I!” she said artlessly.  “I would buy a child with a hundred years of purgatory if I could.”

On the question thus started a discussion arose, conducted by Madame de Troisville and the old Marquise de Casteran with such delicacy and adroitness that the poor victim revealed, without being aware of it, the secrets of her house.  Mademoiselle Armande had taken the chevalier’s arm, and walked away so as to leave the three women free to discuss wedlock.  Madame du Bousquier was then enlightened on the various deceptions of her marriage; and as she was still the same simpleton she had always been, she amused her advisers by delightful naivetes.

Although at first the deceptive marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon made a laugh throughout the town, which was soon initiated into the story of the case, before long Madame du Bousquier won the esteem and sympathy of all the women.  The fact that Mademoiselle Cormon had flung herself headlong into marriage without succeeding in being married, made everybody laugh at her; but when they learned the exceptional position in which the sternness of her religious principles placed her, all the world admired her.  “That poor Madame du Bousquier” took the place of “That good Mademoiselle Cormon.”

Thus the chevalier contrived to render du Bousquier both ridiculous and odious for a time; but ridicule ends by weakening; when all had said their say about him, the gossip died out.  Besides, at fifty-seven years of age the dumb republican seemed to many people to have a right to retire.  This affair, 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