to despair, she returned to her books, her piano, the works of
Beethoven, and her old friend Faucombe. In 1812, when she was twenty-one
years of age, the old archaeologist handed over to her his guardianship
accounts. From that year, she took control of her fortune, which
consisted of fifteen thousand francs a year, derived from Les Touches,
the property of her father; twelve thousand a year from Faucombe (which,
however, she increased one-third on renewing the leases); and a capital
of three hundred thousand francs laid by during her minority by her
guardians.

Felicite acquired from her experience of provincial life, an
understanding of money, and that strong tendency to administrative
wisdom which enables the provinces to hold their own under the
ascensional movement of capital towards Paris. She drew her three
hundred thousand francs from the house of business where her guardian
had placed them, and invested them on the Grand-livre at the very moment
of the disasters of the retreat from Moscow. In this way, she increased
her income by thirty thousand francs. All expenses paid, she found
herself with fifty thousand francs a year to invest. At twenty-one years
of age a girl with such force of will is the equal of a man of thirty.
Her mind had taken a wide range; habits of criticism enabled her
to judge soberly of men, and art, and things, and public questions.
Henceforth she resolved to leave Nantes; but old Faucombe falling ill
with his last illness, she, who had been both wife and daughter to
him, remained to nurse him, with the devotion of an angel, for eighteen
months, closing his eyes at the moment when Napoleon was struggling with
all Europe on the corpse of France. Her removal to Paris was therefore
still further postponed until the close of that crisis.

As a Royalist, she hastened to be present at the return of the Bourbons
to Paris. There the Grandlieus, to whom she was related, received her as
their guest; but the catastrophes of March 20 intervened, and her future
was vague and uncertain. She was thus enabled to see with her own eyes
that last image of the Empire, and behold the Grand Army when it came to
the Champ de Mars, as to a Roman circus, to salute its Caesar before it
went to its death at Waterloo. The great and noble soul of Felicite was
stirred by that magic spectacle. The political commotions, the glamour
of that theatrical play of three months which history has called the
Hundred Days, occupie