Some time before the elections of 1842 he had put himself forward as candidate unless he were meanwhile called to the Upper House as Peer of France.  At the same time, he asked for the title of Count, and for promotion to the higher grade of the Legion of Honor.  In the matter of the elections, the dynastic nominations; now, in the event of Monsieur de la Baudraye being won over to the Government, Sancerre would be more than ever a rotten borough of royalism.  Monsieur de Clagny, whose talents and modesty were more and more highly appreciated by the authorities, gave Monsieur de la Baudraye his support; he pointed out that by raising this enterprising agriculturist to the peerage, a guarantee would be offered to such important undertakings.

Monsieur de la Baudraye, then, a Count, a Peer of France, and Commander of the Legion of Honor, was vain enough to wish to cut a figure with a wife and handsomely appointed house.—­“He wanted to enjoy life,” he said.

He therefore addressed a letter to his wife, dictated by Monsieur de Clagny, begging her to live under his roof and to furnish the house, giving play to the taste of which the evidences, he said, had charmed him at the Chateau d’Anzy.  The newly made Count pointed out to his wife that while the interests of their property forbade his leaving Sancerre, the education of their boys required her presence in Paris.  The accommodating husband desired Monsieur de Clagny to place sixty thousand francs at the disposal of Madame la Comtesse for the interior decoration of their mansion, requesting that she would have a marble tablet inserted over the gateway with the inscription:  Hotel de la Baudraye.

He then accounted to his wife for the money derived from the estate of Silas Piedefer, told her of the investment at four and a half per cent of the eight hundred thousand francs he had brought from New York, and allowed her that income for her expenses, including the education of the children.  As he would be compelled to stay in Paris during some part of the session of the House of Peers, he requested his wife to reserve for him a little suite of rooms in an entresol over the kitchens.

“Bless me! why, he is growing young again—­a gentleman!—­a magnifico!  —­What will he become next?  It is quite alarming,” said Madame de la Baudraye.

“He now fulfils all your wishes at the age of twenty,” replied the lawyer.

The comparison of her future prospects with her present position was unendurable to Dinah.  Only the day before, Anna de Fontaine had turned her head away in order to avoid seeing her bosom friend at the Chamarolles’ school.

“I am a countess,” said Dinah to herself.  “I shall have the peer’s blue hammer-cloth on my carriage, and the leaders of the literary world in my drawing-room—­and I will look at her!”—­And it was this little triumph that told with all its weight at the moment of her rehabilitation, as the world’s contempt had of old weighed on her happiness.