“Wounded thus in all her affections, mistaken in her devotion and love for her husband, to whom she had sacrificed without a word her happiness, her fortune, and her life; mistaken in the education exclusively religious which she had given to her daughter; mistaken in the confidence she had placed in others in the affair of her daughter’s marriage; and obtaining no justice from the heart in which she had sown none but noble sentiments, she united herself still more closely to God as the hand of trouble lay heavy upon her.  She was indeed almost a nun; going daily to church, performing cloistral penances, and practising economy that she might have means to help the poor.

“Could there be, up to this point, a saintlier life or one more tried than that of this noble woman, so gentle under misfortune, so brave in danger, and always Christian?” said Monsieur Alain, appealing to Godefroid.  “You know Madame now,—­you know if she is wanting in sense, judgment, reflection; in fact, she has those qualities to the highest degree.  Well! the misfortunes I have now told you, which might be said to make her life surpass all others in adversity, are as nothing to those that were still in store for this poor woman.  But now let us concern ourselves exclusively with Madame de la Chanterie’s daughter,” said the old man, resuming his narrative.

“At eighteen years of age, the period of her marriage, Mademoiselle de la Chanterie was a young girl of delicate complexion, brown in tone with a brilliant color, graceful in shape, and very pretty.  Above a forehead of great beauty was a mass of dark hair which harmonized with the brown eyes and the general gaiety of her expression.  A certain daintiness of feature was misleading as to her true character and her almost virile decision.  She had small hands and small feet; in fact, there was something fragile about her whole person which excluded the idea of vigor and determination.  Having always lived beside her mother, she had a most perfect innocence of thought and behavior and a really remarkable piety.  This young girl, like her mother, was fanatically attached to the Bourbons; she was therefore a bitter enemy to the Revolution, and regarded the dominion of Napoleon as a curse inflicted by Providence upon France in punishment of the crimes of 1793.

“The conformity of opinion on this subject between Madame de la Chanterie and her daughter, and the daughter’s suitor, was one of the determining reasons of the marriage.

“The friend of the husband had commanded a body of Chouans at the time that hostilities were renewed in 1799; and it seems that the baron’s object (Madame de la Chanterie’s son-in-law was a baron) in fostering the intimacy between his wife and his friend was to obtain, through her influence, certain succor from that friend.