the
bearer of arms, two hundred years old already, for the Bargeton arms
are blazoned thus: _the first or, three attires gules; the second, three
ox's heads cabossed, two and one, sable; the third, barry of six, azure
and argent, in the first, six shells or, three, two, and one_. Provided
with a chaperon, Nais could steer her fortunes as she chose under the
style of the firm, and with the help of such connections as her wit and
beauty would obtain for her in Paris. Nais was enchanted by the prospect
of such liberty. M. de Bargeton was of the opinion that he was making
a brilliant marriage, for he expected that in no long while M. de
Negrepelisse would leave him the estates which he was rounding out so
lovingly; but to an unprejudiced spectator it certainly seemed as though
the duty of writing the bridegroom's epitaph might devolve upon his
father-in-law.

By this time Mme. de Bargeton was thirty-six years old and her husband
fifty-eight. The disparity in age was the more startling since M. de
Bargeton looked like a man of seventy, whereas his wife looked scarcely
half her age. She could still wear rose-color, and her hair hanging
loose upon her shoulders. Although their income did not exceed twelve
thousand francs, they ranked among the half-dozen largest fortunes
in the old city, merchants and officials excepted; for M. and Mme. de
Bargeton were obliged to live in Angouleme until such time as Mme.
de Bargeton's inheritance should fall in and they could go to Paris.
Meanwhile they were bound to be attentive to old M. de Negrepelisse (who
kept them waiting so long that his son-in-law in fact predeceased him),
and Nais' brilliant intellectual gifts, and the wealth that lay like
undiscovered ore in her nature, profited her nothing, underwent the
transforming operation of Time and changed to absurdities. For our
absurdities spring, in fact, for the most part, from the good in us,
from some faculty or quality abnormally developed. Pride, untempered by
intercourse with the great world becomes stiff and starched by contact
with petty things; in a loftier moral atmosphere it would have grown to
noble magnanimity. Enthusiasm, that virtue within a virtue, forming the
saint, inspiring the devotion hidden from all eyes and glowing out upon
the world in verse, turns to exaggeration, with the trifles of a narrow
existence for its object. Far away from the centres of light shed by
great minds, where the air is quick with thought, know