she felt, she said, the finger of God. In 1824 she turned over a new
leaf, talked of economy, stopped her receptions, busied herself with her
children, determined to become a good mother of a family; no favorite
friend was seen at her house. She went to church, reformed her dress,
wore gray, and talked Catholicism, mysticism, and so forth. All this
produced, in 1825, another little son, whom she named Theodore. Soon
after, in 1826, Colleville was appointed sub-director of the
Clergeot division, and later, in 1828, collector of taxes in a Paris
arrondissement. He also received the cross of the Legion of honor, to
enable him to put his daughter at the royal school of Saint-Denis. The
half-scholarship obtained by Keller for the eldest boy, Charles, was
transferred to the second in 1830, when Charles entered the school
of Saint-Louis on a full scholarship. The third son, taken under the
protection of Madame la Dauphine, was provided with a three-quarter
scholarship in the Henri IV. school.

In 1830 Colleville, who had the good fortune not to lose a child, was
obliged, owing to his well-known attachment to the fallen royal family,
to send in his resignation; but he was clever enough to make a bargain
for it,--obtaining in exchange a pension of two thousand four hundred
francs, based on his period of service, and ten thousand francs
indemnity paid by his successor; he also received the rank of officer of
the Legion of honor. Nevertheless, he found himself in rather a cramped
condition when Mademoiselle Thuillier, in 1832, advised him to come and
live near them; pointing out to him the possibility of obtaining some
position in the mayor's office, which, in fact, he did obtain a few
weeks later, at a salary of three thousand francs. Thus Thuillier and
Colleville were destined to end their days together. In 1833 Madame
Colleville, then thirty-five years old, settled herself in the rue
d'Enfer, at the corner of the rue des Deux-Eglises with Celeste
and little Theodore, the other boys being at their several schools.
Colleville was equidistant between the mayor's office and the rue
Saint-Dominique d'Enfer. Thus the household, after a brilliant,
gay, headlong, reformed, and calmed existence, subsided finally into
bourgeois obscurity with five thousand four hundred francs a year for
its sole dependence.

Celeste was by this time twelve years of age, and she promised to be
pretty. She needed masters, and her education ought to cost n