While I was reading the note, my husband, Lucas, Rene, and Nais had eagerly extracted me from my swathings, and then, in truth, I appeared no longer a saint, but a woman of the world.  I really thought my husband and children would go out of their minds with admiration and pleasure.  The news of this masterpiece spread about the house, and all our servants, whom we rather spoil, came flocking, one after another, as if sent for, crying out, “Oh, it is madame’s own self!” I alone did not share in the general enthusiasm.  As for Monsieur de l’Estorade, after working for an hour to find a place in his study where the bust could be seen in its best light, he came in to say to me:—­

“On my way to the Treasury to-day I shall go and see Monsieur Dorlange, and if he is at liberty this evening I shall ask him to dine with us.  To-day is Armand’s half-holiday, and I would like him to see the boy.  The assembled family can then thank him for his gift.”

Monsieur Dorlange accepted the invitation.  At dinner Monsieur de l’Estorade inquired further about his candidacy, giving it however, no approval.  This led straight to politics.  Armand, whose mind is naturally grave and reflective and who reads the newspapers, mingled in the conversation.  Against the practice of youths of the present day, he thinks like his father; that is, he is very conservative; though perhaps less just and wise, as might well be expected in a lad of fifteen.  He was consequently led to contradict Monsieur Dorlange, whose inclination as I told you, is somewhat jacobin.  And I must say I thought the arguments of my little man neither bad nor ill-expressed.  Without ceasing to be polite, Monsieur Dorlange had an air of disdaining a discussion with the poor boy, so much so that I saw Armand on the point of losing patience and replying sharply.  However, as he has been well brought up, I had only to make him a sign and he controlled himself; but seeing him turn scarlet and shut himself up in gloomy silence, I felt that his pride had received a blow, and I thought it little generous in Monsieur Dorlange to crush a young lad in that way.

I know very well that children in these days make the mistake of wishing to be personages before their time, and that it often does them good to suppress such conceit.  But really, Armand has an intellectual development and a power of reasoning beyond his age.  Do you want a proof of it?  Until last year, I had never consented to part with him, and it was only as a day scholar that he followed his course of study at the College Henri IV.  Well, he himself, for the sake of his studies, which were hindered by going and coming to and fro, asked to be placed in the regular manner in the school; and he employed more entreaties and arguments with me to put him under that discipline than an ordinary boy would have used to escape it.  Therefore this manly air and manner, which in most schoolboys would, of course, be intolerably ridiculous, seems in him the result of his natural precocity; and this precocity ought to be forgiven him, inasmuch as it comes to him from God.