Victurnien was not well looked upon at Court; there was no more chance of a great match for him, nor a place.  His Majesty steadily refused to raise the d’Esgrignons to the peerage, the one royal favor which could rescue Victurnien from his wretched position.  It was impossible that he should marry a bourgeoise heiress in his father’s lifetime, so he was bound to live on shabbily under the paternal roof with memories of his two years of splendor in Paris, and the lost love of a great lady to bear him company.  He grew moody and depressed, vegetating at home with a careworn aunt and a half heart-broken father, who attributed his son’s condition to a wasting malady.  Chesnel was no longer there.

The Marquis died in 1830.  The great d’Esgrignon, with a following of all the less infirm noblesse from the Collection of Antiquities, went to wait upon Charles X. at Nonancourt; he paid his respects to his sovereign, and swelled the meagre train of the fallen king.  It was an act of courage which seems simple enough to-day, but, in that time of enthusiastic revolt, it was heroism.

“The Gaul has conquered!” These were the Marquis’ last words.

By that time du Croisier’s victory was complete.  The new Marquis d’Esgrignon accepted Mlle. Duval as his wife a week after his old father’s death.  His bride brought him three millions of francs for du Croisier and his wife settled the reversion of their fortunes upon her in the marriage-contract.  Du Croisier took occasion to say during the ceremony that the d’Esgrignon family was the most honorable of all the ancient houses in France.

Some day the present Marquis d’Esgrignon will have an income of more than a hundred thousand crowns.  You may see him in Paris, for he comes to town every winter and leads a jolly bachelor life, while he treats his wife with something more than the indifference of the grand seigneur of olden times; he takes no thought whatever for her.

“As for Mlle. d’Esgrignon,” said Emile Blondet, to whom all the detail of the story is due, “if she is no longer like the divinely fair woman whom I saw by glimpses in my childhood, she is decidedly, at the age of sixty-seven, the most pathetic and interesting figure in the Collection of Antiquities.  She queens it among them still.  I saw her when I made my last journey to my native place in search of the necessary papers for my marriage.  When my father knew who it was that I had married, he was struck dumb with amazement; he had not a word to say until I told him that I was a prefect.

“‘You were born to it,’ he said, with a smile.

“As I took a walk around the town, I met Mlle. Armande.  She looked taller than ever.  I looked at her, and thought of Marius among the ruins of Carthage.  Had she not outlived her creed, and the beliefs that had been destroyed?  She is a sad and silent woman, with nothing of her old beauty left except the eyes, that shine with an unearthly light.  I watched her on her way to mass, with her book in her hand, and could not help thinking that she prayed to God to take her out of the world.”