most lovable, and so did her gentle unmurmuring humility.  She sincerely believed that all the cruel slights she underwent were the result of her own ugliness, stupidity, and ignorance, and instead of blaming her husband, she merely pitied him for being tied to her.  As to grating that her brother had been a better man than her husband, she would have thought that high treason—­the difference was only that her dear Marguerite was so pretty, so clever, amiable, and well taught, that she had won his heart.

In truth, I had outgrown the ungainliness of my girlhood, and, now that it did not matter to any one, had become rather a handsome woman, and it was of no use to tell her that I had been worse than she, because there was so much more of me, when my dear young husband gave me the whole of his honest heart.

To make herself, at least, less dull was her next desire.  One reason why she had so seldom written was that she knew she could not spell, and Mademoiselle insisted on looking over her letters that they might not be a disgrace.  I doubted whether M. le Comte would have discovered the errors, but when the Marquis praised some letters that I had written to amuse him from Nancy and Mezieres, she was fired with ambition to write such clever letters as might bewitch her husband.  Besides, if she could teach her daughter, the child need not be banished to a convent.

I began to give her a few lessons in the morning, and to read to her.  And just then there came to Nid de Merle, to see me, the good Abbe Bonchamp, the excellent tutor to whom my dear Philippe always said he owed so much.  The good man had since had another employment, and on quitting it, could not help gratifying his desire to me and see the wife and child of his dear pupil, as indeed I had begged him to do, if ever it were in his power, when I fulfilled my husband’s wishes by writing his last greeting and final thanks to the good man.

I remember the dear quaint form riding up on a little hired mule, which he almost concealed with his cassock.  Above, his big hat looked so strange that Gaspard, who was wonderfully forward for his age, ran up to me crying:  ’A droll beast, mamma! it had four legs and a great hat!’ while little Armantine fled crying from the monster.

All the servants were, however, coming out eagerly to receive the blessing of the good man, who had mad himself much beloved in the household.  The Marquis embraced him with tears, and presented him to me, when he fell on his knee, took my hand, pressed it to his lips and bathed it with his tears, and then held Gaspard to his breast with fervent love.

It was necessary to be cheerful before M. de Nidemerle.  He had truly loved his nephew, and mourned for him, but the aged do not like a recurrence to sorrow, so the abbe amused him with the news brought from Saumur, and our party at cards was a complete one that evening.