“I was obliged to return to Chalenoy to relate my ‘coup-de-tete’ to my grandfather.  I arrived early in the morning and approached his bed in the most humble attitude.  He said to me, very sharply, ’You have been unfaithful to all the traditions of your ancestors—­but it is done.  Remember that you have enlisted voluntarily in the Republican army; serve it frankly and loyally, for your decision is made, you cannot now go back on it.’  Then seeing the tears running down my cheeks (he too was moved), and taking my hand with the only one he had left, he drew me to him and pressed me on his heart.  Then giving me seventy louis (it was all he had), he added, ’This will help you to complete your equipment—­go, and at least carry bravely and faithfully, under the flag it has pleased you to choose, the name you bear and the honour of your family.’”

The present Count, too, has played a part in politics in these troublous times, when decisions were almost as hard to take, and one was torn between the desire to do something for one’s country and the difficulty of detaching oneself from old traditions and memories.  People whose grandfathers have died on the scaffold can hardly be expected to be enthusiastic about the Republic and the Marseillaise.  Yet if the nation wants the Republic, and every election accentuates that opinion, it is very difficult to fight against the current.

When I first married, just after the Franco-Prussian War, there seemed some chance of the moderate men, on both sides, joining in a common effort against the radical movement, putting themselves at the head of it and in that way directing and controlling—­but very soon the different sections in parliament defined themselves so sharply that any sort of compromise was difficult.  My host was named deputy, immediately after the war, and though by instinct, training, and association a Royalist and a personal friend of the Orleans family, he was one of a small group of liberal-patriotic deputies who might have supported loyally a moderate Republic had the other Republicans not made their position untenable.  There was an instinctive, unreasonable distrust of any of the old families whose names and antecedents had kept them apart from any republican movement.

We had pleasant afternoons in the big drawing-room.  In the morning we did what we liked.  The Maitresse de Maison never appeared in the drawing-room till the twelve o’clock breakfast.  I used to see her from my window, coming and going—­sometimes walking, when she was making the round of the farm and garden, oftener in her little pony carriage and occasionally in the automobile of her niece, who was staying in the house.  She occupied herself very much with all the village—­old people and children, everybody.  After breakfast we used to sit sometimes in the drawing-room—­the two ladies working, the Comte de S. reading his paper and telling us anything interesting he found there.  Both ladies had most artistic work—­Mme.