When the war recommenced, Charles Mignon was promoted into the cavalry and lost sight of his comrade.  In 1812 the last of the Mignon de La Bastie was an officer of the Legion of honor and major of a regiment of cavalry.  Taken prisoner by the Russians he was sent, like so many others, to Siberia.  He made the journey in company with another prisoner, a poor lieutenant, in whom he recognized his old friend Jean Dumay, brave, neglected, undecorated, unhappy, like a million of other woollen epaulets, rank and file—­that canvas of men on which Napoleon painted the picture of the Empire.  While in Siberia, the lieutenant-colonel, to kill time, taught writing and arithmetic to the Breton, whose early education had seemed a useless waste of time to Pere Scevola.  Charles found in the old comrade of his marching days one of those rare hearts into which a man can pour his griefs while telling his joys.

The young Provencal had met the fate which attends all handsome bachelors.  In 1804, at Frankfort on the Main, he was adored by Bettina Wallenrod, only daughter of a banker, and he married her with all the more enthusiasm because she was rich and a noted beauty, while he was only a lieutenant with no prospects but the extremely problematical future of a soldier of fortune of that day.  Old Wallenrod, a decayed German baron (there is always a baron in a German bank) delighted to know that the handsome lieutenant was the sole representative of the Mignon de La Bastie, approved the love of the blonde Bettina, whose beauty an artist (at that time there really was one in Frankfort) had lately painted as an ideal head of Germany.  Wallenrod invested enough money in the French funds to give his daughter thirty thousand francs a year, and settled it on his anticipated grandsons, naming them counts of La Bastie-Wallenrod.  This “dot” made only a small hole in his cash-box, the value of money being then very low.  But the Empire, pursuing a policy often attempted by other debtors, rarely paid its dividends; and Charles was rather alarmed at this investment, having less faith than his father-in-law in the imperial eagle.  The phenomenon of belief, or of admiration which is ephemeral belief, is not so easily maintained when in close quarters with the idol.  The mechanic distrusts the machine which the traveller admires; and the officers of the army might be called the stokers of the Napoleonic engine,—­if, indeed, they were not its fuel.

However, the Baron Wallenrod-Tustall-Bartenstild promised to come if necessary to the help of the household.  Charles loved Bettina Wallenrod as much as she loved him, and that is saying a good deal; but when a Provencal is moved to enthusiasm all his feelings and attachments are genuine and natural.  And how could he fail to adore that blonde beauty, escaping, as it were, from the canvas of Durer, gifted with an angelic nature and endowed with Frankfort wealth?  The pair had four children, of whom only two daughters survived