. Twice elected deputy, twice
defeated; yesterday director-general, to-day nothing at all, not even
prefect, his successes and his defeats had injured his nature, and given
him the sourness of invalided ambition. Though a brave man and a witty
one and capable of great things, envy, which is the root of existence
in Touraine, the inhabitants of which employ their native genius in
jealousy of all things, injured him in upper social circles, where a
dissatisfied man, frowning at the success of others, slow at compliments
and ready at epigram, seldom succeeds. Had he sought less he might
perhaps have obtained more; but unhappily he had enough genuine
superiority to make him wish to advance in his own way.

At this particular time Monsieur de Chessel's ambition had a second
dawn. Royalty smiled upon him, and he was now affecting the grand
manner. Still he was, I must say, most kind to me, and he pleased me for
the very simple reason that with him I had found peace and rest for the
first time. The interest, possibly very slight, which he showed in
my affairs, seemed to me, lonely and rejected as I was, an image of
paternal love. His hospitable care contrasted so strongly with the
neglect to which I was accustomed, that I felt a childlike gratitude
to the home where no fetters bound me and where I was welcomed and even
courted.

The owners of Frapesle are so associated with the dawn of my life's
happiness that I mingle them in all those memories I love to revive.
Later, and more especially in connection with his letters-patent, I had
the pleasure of doing my host some service. Monsieur de Chessel enjoyed
his wealth with an ostentation that gave umbrage to certain of his
neighbors. He was able to vary and renew his fine horses and elegant
equipages; his wife dressed exquisitely; he received on a grand scale;
his servants were more numerous than his neighbors approved; for all of
which he was said to be aping princes. The Frapesle estate is immense.
Before such luxury as this the Comte de Mortsauf, with one family
cariole,--which in Touraine is something between a coach without springs
and a post-chaise,--forced by limited means to let or farm Clochegourde,
was Tourangean up to the time when royal favor restored the family to a
distinction possibly unlooked for. His greeting to me, the younger son
of a ruined family whose escutcheon dated back to the Crusades, was
intended to show contempt for the large fortune and to belittle