s heiresses,
who, Frenchmen imagine, abound in the Southern El Dorado, alone
reconciled the haughty nobleman to his son's sojourn in America.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE ARISTOCRATS IN AMERICA.

While Maurice was applying himself to study with a zeal and sense of
enjoyment wholly new to him, Bertha was passing through various stages
of ennui, and testing the patience, or rather the digestive powers, of
that sorely discomforted _bon vivant_, her uncle. Day after day she grew
more capricious, unreasonable, unmanageable.

The distressed marquis came to the conclusion that his disturbed animal
economy could only be restored by an amicable separation from his niece.
But in vain he bestowed his smiles, and his _dinners_, upon the
multitudinous suitors by whom the young heiress was besieged; her
autocratic decree condemned him to the cruel duty of closing the
sumptuous repasts by the _dessert_ of a dismissal to each lover in turn,
without extending to any the faintest hope that his sentence might be
reversed. Finally the marquis became a confirmed dyspeptic; the joy of
his life was quenched when his appetite failed, beyond the resuscitating
influence of _absenthe_ and other fashionable stimulants; the glory of
his festive board had departed, and he was haunted by the conviction
that the unnatural conduct of his niece would bring his whitening hairs,
through sorrow and indigestion, to the grave.

A small but dearly prized respite from his trials was granted him when
Bertha paid her yearly visit, of four months, to her relatives in
Brittany. Her stay, however, was never extended beyond the wonted
period, for she found her sojourn at the Chateau de Gramont
unmitigatedly dull. The reception of letters from Maurice, addressed to
his father, alone relieved the tediousness of the hours; but these
welcome messengers were infrequent, brief, and somewhat cold. They left
Bertha so unsatisfied that before the close of the first year of her
cousin's absence she opened a correspondence with him herself. The
initiative letter was suggested by pleasant tidings, which she hastened
to send. It was written immediately after the eighteenth anniversary of
her birthday, and communicated the agreeable intelligence that upon that
day she had again received a token of remembrance from their beloved
Madeleine.

A yearly gift, bearing the impress of those "fairy fingers," was the
only sign Madeleine gave that she lived and remembered.

Three yea