s, and finally had missed
the game! In short, the impotent Republic had won the day from Valiant
Chivalry, and that, too, under the Restoration! Form triumphed; mind
was vanquished by matter, diplomacy by insurrection. And, O final
blow! a mortified grisette revealed the secret of the chevalier's
mornings, and he now passed for a libertine. The liberals cast at his
door all the foundlings hitherto attributed to du Bousquier. But the
faubourg Saint-Germain of Alencon accepted them proudly: it even said,
"That poor chevalier, what else could he do?" The faubourg pitied him,
gathered him closer to their circle, and brought back a few rare
smiles to his face; but frightful enmity was piled upon the head of du
Bousquier. Eleven persons deserted the Cormon salon, and passed to
that of the d'Esgrignons.

The old maid's marriage had a signal effect in defining the two
parties in Alencon. The salon d'Esgrignon represented the upper
aristocracy (the returning Troisvilles attached themselves to it); the
Cormon salon represented, under the clever influence of du Bousquier,
that fatal class of opinions which, without being truly liberal or
resolutely royalist, gave birth to the 221 on that famous day when the
struggle openly began between the most august, grandest, and only true
power, /royalty/, and the most false, most changeful, most oppressive of
all powers,--the power called /parliamentary/, which elective assemblies
exercise. The salon du Ronceret, secretly allied to the Cormon salon,
was boldly liberal.

The Abbe de Sponde, after his return from Prebaudet, bore many and
continual sufferings, which he kept within his breast, saying no word
of them to his niece. But to Mademoiselle Armande he opened his heart,
admitting that, folly for folly, he would much have preferred the
Chevalier de Valois to Monsieur du Bousquier. Never would the dear
chevalier have had the bad taste to contradict and oppose a poor old
man who had but a few days more to live; du Bousquier had destroyed
everything in the good old home. The abbe said, with scanty tears
moistening his aged eyes,--

"Mademoiselle, I haven't even the little grove where I have walked for
fifty years. My beloved lindens are all cut down! At the moment of my
death the Republic appears to me more than ever under the form of a
horrible destruction of the Home."

"You must pardon your niece," said the Chevalier de Valois.
"Republican ideas are the first error of youth which see