he 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 seeks for liberty; later it
finds it the worst of despotisms,--that of an impotent canaille. Your
poor niece is punished where she sinned."

"What will become of me in a house where naked women are painted on the
walls?" said the poor abbe. "Where shall I find other linde