e was
gone, he forgot the glorious legacy she had bequeathed to him. He
detested the court, however, and determined that his son should grow up
far away from its influences. Simon, therefore, passed his childhood
among the mountains drinking in the delicious air, and growing as freely
as a young tree.

But Armand was weak. His friends and family, who had fallen away from
him at the time of his marriage, now sought to bring him back. He
resisted for a time, but at last went to Versailles. The king received
him proudly and said, "Monsieur de Fongereues, it is not well in you to
abandon us thus. The throne needs its faithful supporters."

A few days later he was presented to Mademoiselle de Maillezais--her
beauty was of that quality that dazzles rather than pleases. She made
herself very attractive on this occasion, anxious to take back to the
king this nobleman who had so nearly been lost.

In 1779, Armand married this lady. Simon, the peasant's son, was then
five years of age. When his father spoke of him to his wife some little
time after their marriage, she replied:

"You will, of course, do as you choose, but I should say that any
change would be likely to injure his health."

The Marquis was glad to seize any excuse for keeping Simonne's son away
from that society which his mother had so strongly condemned. It was
with the feeling, therefore, that he was obeying the wishes of his
beloved dead, that he left Simon among the mountains.

It was at this time that the war begun by the enemies of Nechar against
his innovations reached its height. The nobles and the clergy, feeling
their privileges attacked, organized against the Genoese banker a
campaign in which he was to fall. The Maillezais family were Nechar's
pitiless adversaries, and in spite of himself the Marquis was carried
along with them. His wife had acquired a supremacy over him that daily
increased. His weak nature was ever ready to be influenced by others,
and his natural enthusiasm originally aroused by Simonne for another
cause, was perverted to the profit of the _ancien regime_, and finally
he was one of the first to applaud the words of Louis XVI., when he
signed his name to an edict which inflicted on the country a new debt of
four hundred and twenty million.

"It is _legal_ because _I wish it_."

Nevertheless, the Marquis often thought of Simonne when he was alone. He
recalled her beautiful, energetic face, her pathetic, eloquent words.
Then h