‘Sit, Maitre Gardon, you are lame,’ she said, with a wave of her hand.  ’I gave you the incommodity of coming to see me not openly discuss en pleine sale.’

‘Madame is considerate,’ said Isaac, civilly, but with an open-eyed look and air that at once showed her that she had not to deal with one of the ministers who never forgot their low birth in intercourse with her.

‘I understand,’ said she, coming to the point at once, ’that you decline the proposals of Samuel Mace for your daughter-in-law.  Now I wish you to know that Mace is a very good youth, whom I have known from his birth’—­and she went on in his praise, Isaac bowing at each pause, until she had exhausted both Mace’s history and her own beneficent intentions for him.  Then he said, ’Madame is very good, and the young man appeared to me excellent.  Nevertheless, this thing may not be.  My daughter-in-law has resolved not to marry again.’

‘Nay, but this is mere folly,’ said the Duchess.  ’We hold not Catholic tenets on merit in abstaining, but rather go by St. Paul’s advice that the younger widows should marry, rather than wax wanton.  And, to tell you the truth, Maitre Gardon, this daughter of yours does seem to have set tongues in motion.’

‘Not by her own fault, Madame.’

’Stay, my good friend; I never found a man—­minister or lay—­who was a fair judge in these matters.  You old men are no better than the young—­rather worse—­because you do not distrust yourselves.  Now, I say no harm of the young woman, and I know an angel would be abused at Montauban for not wearing sad-coloured wings; but she needs a man’s care—­you are frail, you cannot live for ever—­and how is it to be with her and her child?’

‘I hope to bestow them among her kindred ere I die, Madame,’ said Isaac.

’No kindred can serve a woman like a sensible husband!  Besides, I thought all perished at Paris.  Listen, Isaac Gardon:  I tell you plainly that scandal is afloat.  You are blamed for culpable indifference to alleged levities—­I say not that it is true—­but I see this, that unless you can bestow your daughter-in-law on a good, honest man, able to silence the whispers of malice, there will be measures taken that will do shame both to your own gray hairs and to the memory of your dead son, as well as expose the poor young woman herself.  You are one who has a true tongue, Isaac Gardon; and if you can assure me that she is a faithful, good woman, as poor Mace thinks her, and will give her to him in testimony thereof, then shall not a mouth open against her.  If not, in spite of all my esteem for you, the discipline of the Reformed must take its course.’

‘And for what?’ said Isaac, with a grave tone, almost of reproof.  ’What discipline can punish a woman for letting her infant wear a coloured ribbon, and shielding it from a blow?’