第29章
"Nearly a whole year of happiness followed.Madame de la Chanterie enjoyed during that time the tenderest care and the most delicate attentions that a man deeply in love can bestow upon a loving woman.
However short it may have been, the honeymoon did shine into the heart of that noble and most unfortunate woman.You know that in those days women nursed their children.Madame de la Chanterie had a daughter.
That period during which a woman ought to be the object of redoubled care and tenderness proved, in this case, the beginning of untold miseries.The Master of petitions was obliged to sell all the property he could lay his hands on to pay former debts (which he had not acknowledged to his father) and fresh losses at play.Then the National Assembly decreed the dissolution of the Grand Council, the parliament, and all the law offices so dearly bought.
"The young household, increased by a daughter, was soon without other means than those settled upon Madame de la Chanterie by her father-in-law.In twenty months that charming woman, now only seventeen and a half years old, was obliged to live--she and the child she was nursing --in an obscure quarter, and by the labor of her hands.She was then entirely abandoned by her husband, who fell by degrees lower and lower, into the society of women of the worst kind.Never did she reproach her husband, never has she allowed herself to blame him.She has sometimes told us how, during those wretched days, she would pray for her 'dear Henri.'
"That scamp was named Henri," said the worthy man interrupting himself."We never mention that name here, nor that of Henriette.Iresume:
"Never leaving her little room in the rue de la Corderie du Temple, except to buy provisions or to fetch her work, Madame de la Chanterie contrived to get along, thanks to a hundred francs which her father-in-law, touched by her goodness, sent to her once a month.
Nevertheless, foreseeing that that resource might fail her, the poor young woman had taken up the hard and toilsome work of corset-making in the service of a celebrated dressmaker.This precaution proved a wise one.The father died, and his property was obtained by the son (the old monarchical laws of entail being then overthrown) and speedily dissipated by him.The former Master of petitions was now one of the most ferocious presidents of the Revolutionary tribunals of that period; he became the terror of Normandy, and was able to satisfy all his passions.Imprisoned in his turn after the fall of Robespierre, the hatred of his department doomed him to certain death.
"Madame de la Chanterie heard of this through a letter of farewell which her husband wrote to her.Instantly, giving her little girl to the care of a neighbor, she went to the town where that wretch was imprisoned, taking with her the few louis which were all that she owned.These louis enabled her to make her way into the prison.She succeeded in saving her husband by dressing him in her own clothes, under circumstances almost identical with those which, sometime later, were so serviceable to Madame de la Valette.She was condemned to death, but the government was ashamed to carry out the sentence; and the Revolutionary tribunal (the one over which her husband had formerly presided) connived at her escape.She returned to Paris on foot, without means, sleeping in farm buildings and fed by charity.""Good God!" cried Godefroid.
"Ah! wait," said Monsieur Alain; "that is nothing.In eight years the poor woman saw her husband three times.The first time he stayed twenty-four hours in the humble lodging of his wife, and carried away with him all her money; having showered her with marks of tenderness and made her believe in his complete conversion.'I could not,' she said, 'refuse a husband for whom I prayed daily and of whom I thought exclusively.' On the second occasion, Monsieur de la Chanterie arrived almost dying, and with what an illness! She nursed him and saved his life.Then she tried to bring him to better sentiments and a decent life.After promising all that angel asked, the jacobin plunged back into frightful profligacy, and finally escaped the hands of justice only by again taking refuge with his wife, in whose care he died in safety.
"Oh! but that is nothing!" cried the goodman, seeing the pain on Godefroid's face."No one, in the world in which he lived, had known he was a married man.Two years after his death Madame de la Chanterie discovered that a second Madame de la Chanterie existed, widowed like herself, and, like her, ruined.That bigamist had found two angels incapable of discarding him.
"Towards 1803," resumed Alain after a pause, "Monsieur de Boisfrelon, uncle of Madame de la Chanterie, came to Paris, his name having been erased from the list of /emigres/, and brought Madame the sum of two hundred thousand francs which her father-in-law, the old purveyor, had formerly entrusted to him for the benefit of his son's children.He persuaded the widow to return to Normandy; where she completed the education of her daughter and purchased on excellent terms and still by the advice of her uncle, a patrimonial estate.""Ah!" cried Godefroid.
"All that is still nothing," said Monsieur Alain; "we have not yet reached the period of storms and darkness.I resume:
"In 1807, after four years of rest and peace, Madame de la Chanterie married her daughter to a gentleman of rank, whose piety, antecedents, and fortune offered every guarantee that could be given,--a man who, to use a popular saying, 'was after every one's own heart,' in the best society of the provincial city where Madame and her daughter passed their winters.I should tell you that this society was composed of seven or eight families belonging to the highest nobility in France: d'Esgrignon, Troisville, Casteran, Nouatre, etc.At the end of eighteen months the baron deserted his wife, and disappeared in Paris, where he changed his name.