in small lots among the sons of the soil, the peasantry,--excepting the
pavilion, its dependencies, and fifty surrounding acres, which Monsieur
Gaubertin retained as a gift to his poetic and sentimental spouse.

* * * * *

Many years after these events, during the year 1837, one of the most
remarkable political writers of the day, Emile Blondet, reached the
last stages of a poverty which he had so far hidden beneath an outward
appearance of ease and elegance. He was thinking of taking some
desperate step, realizing, as he did, that his writings, his mind,
his knowledge, his ability for the direction of affairs, had made him
nothing better than a mere functionary, mechanically serving the ends of
others; seeing that every avenue was closed to him and all places
taken; feeling that he had reached middle-life without fame and without
fortune; that fools and middle-class men of no training had taken the
places of the courtiers and incapables of the Restoration, and that the
government was reconstituted such as it was before 1830. One evening,
when he had come very near committing suicide (a folly he had so often
laughed at), while his mind travelled back over his miserable existence
calumniated and worn down with toil far more than with the dissipations
charged against him, the noble and beautiful face of a woman rose before
his eyes, like a statue rising pure and unbroken amid the saddest ruins.
Just then the porter brought him a letter sealed with black from the
Comtesse de Montcornet, telling him of the death of her husband, who had
again taken service in the army and commanded a division. The count
had left her his property, and she had no children. The letter, though
dignified, showed Blondet very plainly that the woman of forty whom he
had loved in his youth offered him a friendly hand and a large fortune.

A few days ago the marriage of the Comtesse de Montcornet with Monsieur
Blondet, appointed prefect in one of the departments, was celebrated in
Paris. On their way to take possession of the prefecture, they followed
the road which led past what had formerly been Les Aigues. They stopped
the carriage near the spot where the two pavilions had once stood,
wishing to see the places so full of tender memories for each. The
country was no longer recognizable. The mysterious woods, the park
avenues, all were cleared away; the landscape looked like a tailor's
pattern-card. The sons of the s