“When these arrangements had been completed by the two families, the father sent for the son.  At this time the latter was Master of petitions to the Grand Council.  He was twenty-five years of age, and had already lived a life of folly with all the young seigneurs of the period; in fact, the old purveyor had been forced more than once to pay his debts.  The poor father, foreseeing further follies, was only too glad to make a settlement on his daughter-in-law of a certain sum; and he entailed the estate of la Chanterie on the heirs male of the marriage.

“But the Revolution,” said Monsieur Alain in a parenthesis, “made that last precaution useless.

“Gifted with the beauty of an angel,” he continued, “and with wonderful grace and agility in all exercises of the body, the young Master of petitions possessed the gift of charm.  Mademoiselle de Champignelles became, as you can readily believe, very much in love with her husband.  The old man, delighted with the outset of the marriage, and believing in the reform of his son, sent the young couple to Paris.  All this happened about the beginning of the year 1788.

“Nearly a whole year of happiness followed.  Madame de la Chanterie enjoyed during that time the tenderest care and the most delicate attentions that a man deeply in love can bestow upon a loving woman.  However short it may have been, the honeymoon did shine into the heart of that noble and most unfortunate woman.  You know that in those days women nursed their children.  Madame de la Chanterie had a daughter.  That period during which a woman ought to be the object of redoubled care and tenderness proved, in this case, the beginning of untold miseries.  The Master of petitions was obliged to sell all the property he could lay his hands on to pay former debts (which he had not acknowledged to his father) and fresh losses at play.  Then the National Assembly decreed the dissolution of the Grand Council, the parliament, and all the law offices so dearly bought.

“The young household, increased by a daughter, was soon without other means than those settled upon Madame de la Chanterie by her father-in-law.  In twenty months that charming woman, now only seventeen and a half years old, was obliged to live—­she and the child she was nursing—­in an obscure quarter, and by the labor of her hands.  She was then entirely abandoned by her husband, who fell by degrees lower and lower, into the society of women of the worst kind.  Never did she reproach her husband, never has she allowed herself to blame him.  She has sometimes told us how, during those wretched days, she would pray for her ‘dear Henri.’

“That scamp was named Henri,” said the worthy man interrupting himself.  “We never mention that name here, nor that of Henriette.  I resume: