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We won't even need a loose-jointed confession, because we caught him black-handed. But my guess wasn't such a bad one it was n't Arsdale, but it was Jacques Moisson, his father's valet." "Jacques Moisson?" "The son of that old crone Marie there. He caught the dope habit evidently from his master and has been to the bad ever since Arsdale senior died.
It was a long distance from Balzac's idealism to the realism of Moisson, which awakened in me memories of the stories and melodramas of Ducray-Duminil, of Guilbert de Pixérecourt "Alexis, ou la Maisonette dans les Bois," "Victor, ou l'Enfant de la Forêt," and many others of the same date and style so much discredited nowadays.
One evening in the winter of 1868 or 1869, my father-in-law, Moisson, with whom I was chatting after dinner, took up a book that was lying on the table, open at the page where I had stopped reading, and said: "Ah! you are reading Mme. de la Chanterie?" "Yes," I replied. "A fine book; do you know it?" "Of course! I even know the heroine." "Mme. de la Chanterie!" " By her real name Mme. de Combray.
Evidently this tower, planned as were all Mme. de Combray's abodes, was one of the many refuges arranged by the Chouans from the coast of Normandy to Paris and known only to themselves. But why was Mme. Moisson accommodated there without being taken into her hostess's confidence?
During the Terror my mother married Moisson, my father, a painter and engraver, a plebeian but also an ardent royalist, participating in all the plots for the deliverance of the royal family. This explains the mésalliance.
Some ten years later a little girl of nine appeared, a niece of Arsdale's, it was said, and this completed the household, though old Père Moisson died in the course of time, leaving his wife and Jacques as a sort of legacy to his old master, for a body-guard.
If Mme. de Combray wished to avert suspicion by having two women and a child there, she might have told them so; and if she thought Mme. Moisson too excitable to hear such a confession, she should not have exposed her to nocturnal mysteries that could only tend to increase her excitement!
She hoped, besides, that the monarchy, of whose reestablishment she had no doubt, would recognise my father's services by ennobling him and reviving the name of Brécourt, which was now represented only in the female line. She always called herself Moisson de Brécourt, and bore me a grudge for using only my father's name.
And because this place was called Moisson, and when they returned they said that they had been as far as Moisson, they were greeted with great laughter everywhere.
"You have not come in uniform, which is all the better where we are going; besides, it gives me the hope of presenting you to my respected aunt, the Duchesse de Montserrât, who will take your black coat as a compliment to the whole Bourbon dynasty. You must come with me there, if it only be for half an hour. And now tell me, have you ever dined at the 'Moisson d'Or'?"
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