,--and of one disease or
another a man must die at the end. After the Baden business--and he had
dragged off his wife to Champagne--the Duke became greatly broken; he
brought his little daughter to a convent at Paris, putting the child
under the special guardianship of Madame de Florac, with whom and with
whose family in these latter days the old chief of the house effected a
complete reconciliation. The Duke was now for ever coming to Madame de
Florac; he poured all his wrongs and griefs into her ear with garrulous
senile eagerness. "That little Duchesse is a monstre, a femme d'Eugene
Sue," the Vicomte used to say; "the poor old Duke he cry--ma parole
d'honneur, he cry and I cry too when he comes to recount to my poor
mother, whose sainted heart is the asile of all griefs, a real Hotel
Dieu, my word the most sacred, with beds for all the afflicted, with
sweet words, like Sisters of Charity, to minister to them:--I cry, mon
bon Pendennis, when this vieillard tells his stories about his wife and
tears his white hairs to the feet of my mother."

When the little Antoinette was separated by her father from her mother,
the Duchesse d'Ivry, it might have been expected that that poetess would
have dashed off a few more cris de l'ame, shrieking according to her
wont, and baring and beating that shrivelled maternal bosom of hers,
from which her child had been just torn. The child skipped and laughed
to go away to the convent. It was only when she left Madame de Florac
that she used to cry; and when urged by that good lady to exhibit a
little decorous sentiment in writing to her mamma, Antoinette would ask,
in her artless way, "Pourquoi? Mamma used never to speak to me except
sometimes before the world, before ladies, that understands itself. When
her gentleman came, she put me to the door; then she gave me tapes, o
oui, she gave me tapes! I cry no more; she has so much made to cry M. le
Duc, that it is quite enough of one in a family." So Madame la Duchesse
d'Ivry did not weep, even in print, for the loss of her pretty little
Antoinette; besides, she was engaged, at that time, by other sentimental
occupations. A young grazier of their neighbouring town, of an aspiring
mind and remarkable poetic talents, engrossed the Duchesse's platonic
affections at this juncture. When he had sold his beasts at market, he
would ride over and read Rousseau and Schiller with Madame la Duchesse,
who formed him. His pretty young wife was rendered mi