This caitiff monk for gold did swear,

That by his drugs my rival fair

A saint in heaven should be.--SCOTT

A grand cavalcade bore the house of Quinet from Montauban--coaches,

wagons, outriders, gendarmes--it was a perfect court progress, and

so low and cumbrous that it was a whole week in reaching a grand

old castle standing on a hill-side among chestnut woods, with an

avenue a mile long leading up to it; and battlemented towers fit to

stand a siege.

Eustacie was ranked among the Duchess's gentlewomen. She was so

far acknowledged as a lady of birth, that she was usually called

Madame Esperance; and though no one was supposed to doubt her being

Theodore Gardon's widow, she was regarded as being a person of rank

who had made a misalliance by marrying him. This Madame de Quinet

had allowed the household to infer, thinking that the whole bearing

of her guest was too unlike that of a Paris bourgeoise not to

excite suspicion, but she deemed it wiser to refrain from treating

her with either intimacy or distinction that might excite jealousy

or suspicion.

Even as it was, the consciousness of a secret, or

the remnants of Montauban gossip, prevented any familiarity between

Eustacie and the good ladies who surrounded her; they were very

civil to each other, but their only connecting link was the delight

that every one took in petting pretty little Rayonette, and the

wonder that was made of her signs of intelligence and attempts at

talking. E

Even when she toddled fearlessly up to the stately

Duchess on her canopied throne, and held out her entreating hands,

and lisped the word 'nontre,' Madame would pause in her

avocations, take her on her knee, and display that wonderful gold

and enamel creature which cried tic-tic, and still remained an

unapproachable mystery to M. le Marquis and M. le Vicomte, her

grandsons.

Pale, formal stiff boys they looked, twelve and ten years old, and

under the dominion of a very learned tutor, who taught them Latin,

Greek and Hebrew, alternately with an equally precise, stiff old

esquire, who trained them in martial exercises, which seemed to be

as much matters of rote with them as their tasks, and to be quite

as uninteresting. It did not seem as if they ever played, or

thought of playing; and if they were ever to be gay, witty

Frenchmen, a wonderful change must come over them.

The elder was already betrothed to a Bearnese damsel, of an

unimpeachably ancient and Calvinistic family; and the whole

establishment had for the last three years been employed on

tapestry hangings for a whole suite of rooms, that were to be

fitted up and hung with the histories of Ruth, of Abigail, of the

Shunammite, and of Esther, which their diligent needles might hope

to complete by the time the marriage should take place, three years

later!




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