“‘What were her words?’ Madame de Crequy replied, slowly, as if forcing her memory to the extreme of accuracy.  ‘My cousin,’ she said, ’when I marry, I marry a man, not a petit-maitre.  I marry a man who, whatever his rank may be will add dignity to the human race by his virtues, and not be content to live in an effeminate court on the traditions of past grandeur.’  She borrowed her words from the infamous Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the friend of her scarce less infamous father—­nay!  I will say it,—­if not her words, she borrowed her principles.  And my son to request her to marry him!’

“‘It was my father’s written wish,’ said Clement.

“’But did you not love her?  You plead your father’s words,—­words written twelve years before,—­and as if that were your reason for being indifferent to my dislike to the alliance.  But you requested her to marry you,—­and she refused you with insolent contempt; and now you are ready to leave me,—­leave me desolate in a foreign land—­’

“‘Desolate! my mother! and the Countess Ludlow stands there!’

“’Pardon, madame!  But all the earth, though it were full of kind hearts, is but a desolation and a desert place to a mother when her only child is absent.  And you, Clement, would leave me for this Virginie,—­this degenerate De Crequy, tainted with the atheism of the Encyclopedistes!  She is only reaping some of the fruit of the harvest whereof her friends have sown the seed.  Let her alone!  Doubtless she has friends—­it may be lovers—­among these demons, who, under the cry of liberty, commit every licence.  Let her alone, Clement!  She refused you with scorn:  be too proud to notice her new.’

“‘Mother, I cannot think of myself; only of her.’

“‘Think of me, then!  I, your mother, forbid you to go.’

“Clement bowed low, and went out of the room instantly, as one blinded.  She saw his groping movement, and, for an instant, I think her heart was touched.  But she turned to me, and tried to exculpate her past violence by dilating upon her wrongs, and they certainly were many.  The Count, her husband’s younger brother, had invariably tried to make mischief between husband and wife.  He had been the cleverer man of the two, and had possessed extraordinary influence over her husband.  She suspected him of having instigated that clause in her husband’s will, by which the Marquis expressed his wish for the marriage of the cousins.  The Count had had some interest in the management of the De Crequy property during her son’s minority.  Indeed, I remembered then, that it was through Count de Crequy that Lord Ludlow had first heard of the apartment which we afterwards took in the Hotel de Crequy; and then the recollection of a past feeling came distinctly out of the mist, as it were; and I called to mind how, when we first took up our abode in the Hotel de Crequy, both Lord Ludlow and I imagined that the arrangement was displeasing