Gertrude de Lannilis, Countess de Lavardens, had been very unfortunate.  At eighteen she had been guilty of a folly, the only one of her life, but that one—­irreparable.  She had married for love, in a burst of enthusiasm and exaltation, M. de Lavardens, one of the most fascinating and brilliant men of his time.  He did not love her, and only married her from necessity; he had devoured his patrimonial fortune to the very last farthing, and for two or three years had supported himself by various expedients.  Mademoiselle de Lannilis knew all that, and had no illusions on these points, but she said to herself: 

“I will love him so much, that he will end by loving me.”

Hence all her misfortunes.  Her existence might have been tolerable, if she had not loved her husband so much; but she loved him too much.  She had only succeeded in wearying him by her importunities and tenderness.  He returned to his former life, which had been most irregular.  Fifteen years had passed thus, in a long martyrdom, supported by Madame de Lavardens with all the appearance of passive resignation.  Nothing ever could distract her from, or cure her of, the love which was destroying her.

M. de Lavardens died in 1869; he left a son fourteen years of age, in whom were already visible all the defects and all the good qualities of his father.  Without being seriously affected, the fortune of Madame de Lavardens was slightly compromised, slightly diminished.  Madame de Lavardens sold her mansion in Paris, retired to the country, where she lived with strict economy, and devoted herself to the education of her son.

But here again grief and disappointment awaited her.  Paul de Lavardens was intelligent, amiable, and affectionate, but thoroughly rebellious against any constraint, and any species of work.  He drove to despair three or four tutors who vainly endeavored to force something serious into his head, went up to the military college of Saint-Cyr, failed at the examination, and began to devour in Paris, with all the haste and folly possible, 200,000 or 300,000 francs.

That done, he enlisted in the first regiment of the Chasseurs d’Afrique, had in the very beginning of his military career the good fortune to make one of an expeditionary column sent into the Sahara, distinguished himself, soon became quartermaster, and at the end of three years was about to be appointed sub-lieutenant, when he was captivated by a young person who played the ‘Fille de Madame Angot’, at the theatre in Algiers.

Paul had finished his time, he quitted the service, and went to Paris with his charmer . . . . then it was a dancer . . . . then it was an actress . . . . then a circus-rider.  He tried life in every form.  He led the brilliant and miserable existence of the unoccupied.