Mademoiselle Thuillier, in 1832, advised him to come and live near them; pointing out to him the possibility of obtaining some position in the mayor’s office, which, in fact, he did obtain a few weeks later, at a salary of three thousand francs.  Thus Thuillier and Colleville were destined to end their days together.  In 1833 Madame Colleville, then thirty-five years old, settled herself in the rue d’Enfer, at the corner of the rue des Deux-Eglises with Celeste and little Theodore, the other boys being at their several schools.  Colleville was equidistant between the mayor’s office and the rue Saint-Dominique d’Enfer.  Thus the household, after a brilliant, gay, headlong, reformed, and calmed existence, subsided finally into bourgeois obscurity with five thousand four hundred francs a year for its sole dependence.

Celeste was by this time twelve years of age, and she promised to be pretty.  She needed masters, and her education ought to cost not less than two thousand francs a year.  The mother felt the necessity of keeping her under the eye of her godfather and godmother.  She therefore very willingly adopted the proposal of Mademoiselle Thuillier, who, without committing herself to any engagement, allowed Madame Colleville to understand that the fortunes of her brother, his wife, and herself would go, ultimately, to the little Celeste.  The child had been left at Auteuil until she was seven years of age, adored by the good old Madame Lemprun, who died in 1829, leaving twenty thousand francs, and a house which was sold for the enormous sum of twenty-eight thousand.  The lively little girl had seen very little of her mother, but very much of Mademoiselle and Madame Thuillier when she first returned to the paternal mansion in 1829; but in 1833 she fell under the dominion of Flavie, who was then, as we have said, endeavoring to do her duty, which, like other women instigated by remorse, she exaggerated.  Without being an unkind mother, Flavie was very stern with her daughter.  She remembered her own bringing-up, and swore within herself to make Celeste a virtuous woman.  She took her to mass, and had her prepared for her first communion by a rector who has since become a bishop.  Celeste was all the more readily pious, because her godmother, Madame Thuillier, was a saint, and the child adored her; she felt that the poor neglected woman loved her better than her own mother.

From 1833 to 1840 she received a brilliant education according to the ideas of the bourgeoisie.  The best music-masters made her a fair musician; she could paint a water-color properly; she danced extremely well; and she had studied the French language, history, geography, English, Italian,—­in short, all that constitutes the education of a well-brought-up young lady.  Of medium height, rather plump, unfortunately near-sighted, she was neither plain nor pretty; not without delicacy or even brilliancy of complexion, it is true, but totally devoid of all distinction of manner.  She had a great fund of reserved sensibility, and her godfather and godmother, Mademoiselle Thuillier and Colleville, were unanimous on one point,—­the great resource of mothers—­namely, that Celeste was capable of attachment.  One of her beauties was a magnificent head of very fine blond hair; but her hands and feet showed her bourgeois origin.