e
mortgage on the house, you would show your gratitude and receive your
stepmother--"
Hortense started in horror.
"Victorin will see about that," said Celestine coldly.
"But do you know what Monsieur le Maire's answer was?" said Lisbeth. "'I
mean to leave them where they are. Horses can only be broken in by lack
of food, sleep, and sugar.'--Why, Baron Hulot was not so bad as Monsieur
Crevel.
"So, my poor dears, you may say good-bye to the money. And such a fine
fortune! Your father paid three million francs for the Presles estate,
and he has thirty thousand francs a year in stocks! Oh!--he has no
secrets from me. He talks of buying the Hotel de Navarreins, in the
Rue du Bac. Madame Marneffe herself has forty thousand francs a
year.--Ah!--here is our guardian angel, here comes your mother!" she
exclaimed, hearing the rumble of wheels.
And presently the Baroness came down the garden steps and joined the
party. At fifty-five, though crushed by so many troubles, and constantly
trembling as if shivering with ague, Adeline, whose face was indeed
pale and wrinkled, still had a fine figure, a noble outline, and natural
dignity. Those who saw her said, "She must have been beautiful!" Worn
with the grief of not knowing her husband's fate, of being unable
to share with him this oasis in the heart of Paris, this peace and
seclusion and the better fortune that was dawning on the family, her
beauty was the beauty of a ruin. As each gleam of hope died out, each
day of search proved vain, Adeline sank into fits of deep melancholy
that drove her children to despair.
The Baroness had gone out that morning with fresh hopes, and was
anxiously expected. An official, who was under obligations to Hulot, to
whom he owed his position and advancement, declared that he had seen
the Baron in a box at the Ambigu-Comique theatre with a woman of
extraordinary beauty. So Adeline had gone to call on the Baron Verneuil.
This important personage, while asserting that he had positively seen
his old patron, and that his behaviour to the woman indicated an illicit
establishment, told Madame Hulot that to avoid meeting him the Baron had
left long before the end of the play.
"He looked like a man at home with the damsel, but his dress betrayed
some lack of means," said he in conclusion.
"Well?" said the three women as the Baroness came towards them.
"Well, Monsieur Hulot is in Paris; and to me," said Adeline, "it is a
gleam of happiness o
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