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"Why, the woman is left to live on a small allowance, the world turns its back on her, she has no more finery, and no respect paid her the two things which, in my opinion, are the sum-total of woman," said the little old man. "But she has happiness!" said Madame de la Baudraye sententiously. "No," said the master of the house, lighting his candle to go to bed, "for she has a lover."
By the end of five or six years the ante-room, the dining-room, the two drawing-rooms, and the boudoir which Dinah had arranged on the ground floor of La Baudraye, every spot even to the staircase, were crammed with masterpieces collected in the four adjacent departments. These surroundings, which were called queer by the neighbors, were quite in harmony with Dinah.
I would not give you five per cent on a debt to be recovered from the estate of the late Duc d'Orleans nor even," he added in a low voice "from MONSIEUR." "So you have come to buy up the bills?" said La Baudraye, thinking himself very clever. "Buy them!" said his visitor. "Why, what do you take me for?
In the course of that winter, the Comtesse de la Baudraye, with the support of the Attorney-General to the Court of Appeals, tried to form a little circle. Of course, she had an "at home" day, she made a selection among men of mark, receiving none but those of serious purpose and ripe years. She tried to amuse herself by going to the Opera, French and Italian.
The two great men remained unrecognized during a whole morning at the inn where they had put up, and it was only by chance that Monsieur de Clagny heard of their arrival. Madame de la Baudraye, in despair at this, despatched Gatien Boirouge, who had no vineyards, to beg the two gentlemen to spend a few days at the Chateau d'Anzy.
In 1800, tired of hoping, and perhaps tired of lending, he returned to Sancerre, bought back La Baudraye out of a feeling of vanity and imaginary pride, quite intelligible in a sheriff's grandson, though under the consulate his prospects were but slender; all the more so, indeed, because the ex-farmer-general had small hopes of his heir's perpetuating the new race of La Baudraye.
Madame Piedefer had no great difficulty now in removing the film from her daughter's eyes. She sent for Monsieur de Clagny, who completed the work by assuring Madame de la Baudraye that if she would give up Etienne, her husband would allow her to keep the children and to live in Paris, and would restore her to the command of her own fortune. "And what a life you are leading!" said he.
So beware of offending Monsieur de la Baudraye; he would forgive an infidelity, because he could make capital of it, but he would be doubly implacable if you should touch him on the spot so cruelly wounded by Monsieur Milaud of Nevers, and would make your life unendurable."
Thus those ladies who visited at La Baudraye were perpetually piqued by Dinah's success in leading the fashion; do what they would, they were always behind, or, as they say on the turf, distanced. While all these trifles gave rise to malignant envy in the ladies of Sancerre, Dinah's conversation and wit engendered absolute aversion.
Monsieur de la Baudraye had sold his wine well, he had sold his wool, he had felled his timber, and, without telling his wife, he had come to Paris to invest two hundred thousand francs in the purchase of a delightful residence in the Rue de l'Arcade, that was being sold in liquidation of an aristocratic House that was in difficulties.
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