a long-sought angel, taught her the manoeuvre of the
foot,--letting it peep beneath the petticoat, to show its tiny size,
at the moment when the nose became aggressively red; in short, Madame
d'Aubrion had cleverly made the very best of her offspring. By means
of full sleeves, deceptive pads, puffed dresses amply trimmed,
and high-pressure corsets, she had obtained such curious feminine
developments that she ought, for the instruction of mothers, to have
exhibited them in a museum.

Charles became very intimate with Madame d'Aubrion precisely because she
was desirous of becoming intimate with him. Persons who were on board
the brig declared that the handsome Madame d'Aubrion neglected no means
of capturing so rich a son-in-law. On landing at Bordeaux in June, 1827,
Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle d'Aubrion, and Charles lodged at the same
hotel and started together for Paris. The hotel d'Aubrion was hampered
with mortgages; Charles was destined to free it. The mother told him how
delighted she would be to give up the ground-floor to a son-in-law. Not
sharing Monsieur d'Aubrion's prejudices on the score of nobility, she
promised Charles Grandet to obtain a royal ordinance from Charles
X. which would authorize him, Grandet, to take the name and arms
of d'Aubrion and to succeed, by purchasing the entailed estate for
thirty-six thousand francs a year, to the titles of Captal de Buch and
Marquis d'Aubrion. By thus uniting their fortunes, living on good terms,
and profiting by sinecures, the two families might occupy the hotel
d'Aubrion with an income of over a hundred thousand francs.

"And when a man has a hundred thousand francs a year, a name, a
family, and a position at court,--for I will get you appointed as
gentleman-of-the-bedchamber,--he can do what he likes," she said to
Charles. "You can then become anything you choose,--master of the
rolls in the council of State, prefect, secretary to an embassy, the
ambassador himself, if you like. Charles X. is fond of d'Aubrion; they
have known each other from childhood."

Intoxicated with ambition, Charles toyed with the hopes thus cleverly
presented to him in the guise of confidences poured from heart to heart.
Believing his father's affairs to have been settled by his uncle, he
imagined himself suddenly anchored in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,--that
social object of all desire, where, under shelter of Mademoiselle
Mathilde's purple nose, he was to reappear as the Comte d'Aub