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Updated: June 6, 2025
The old woman dropped her knitting, fumbled in her pocket for a while, and at length drew out an old chaplet of black wood, on which she began to pray with a fervor which gave to her old and withered face a splendor so vigorous that the other old woman imitated her friend, and then all present, on a sign from the rector, joining in the spiritual uplifting of Mademoiselle de Guenic. "Alas!
Madame du Gua, the Abbe Gudin, Major Brigaut, the Chevalier du Vissard, the Baron du Guenic, and the Comte de Bauvan raised the cry of "Vive le roi!" For a moment the other leaders hesitated; then, carried away by the noble action of the marquis, they begged him to forget what had passed, assuring him that, letters-patent or not, he must always be their leader.
"What is that you say, Mariotte?" exclaimed the old baron. "A Guenic marry a des Touches! The des Touches were not even grooms in the days when du Guesclin considered our alliance a signal honor." "A woman who takes a man's name, Camille Maupin!" said the baroness. "The Maupins are an old family," said the baron; "they bear: gules, three " He stopped.
We must admit that the Baron du Guenic was illiterate as a peasant. He could read, write, and do some little ciphering; he knew the military art and heraldry, but, excepting always his prayer-book, he had not read three volumes in the course of his life.
"Madame la duchesse," replied the abbe, "do not mix up spiritual things with worldly things; they are usually irreconcilable. In the first place, what is this matter?" "You know that my daughter Sabine is dying of grief; Monsieur du Guenic has left her for Madame de Rochefide." "It is very dreadful, very serious; but you know what our dear Saint Francois de Sales says on that subject.
"Monsieur," she said, sitting up in bed and looking angrily at Dommanget, "Monsieur du Guenic can lose thirty, fifty, a hundred thousand francs if it pleases him, without any one having a right to think it wrong or read him a lesson. It is far better that Monsieur de Trailles should win his money than that we should win Monsieur de Trailles'."
Monsieur du Guenic was a tall, straight, wiry, lean old man. His oval face was lined with innumerable wrinkles, which formed a net-work over his cheek-bones and above his eyebrows, giving to his face a resemblance to those choice old men whom Van Ostade, Rembrandt, Mieris, and Gerard Dow so loved to paint, in pictures which need a microscope to be fully appreciated.
"Monsieur Grimont has heard some very grave charges against Mademoiselle des Touches, who for the last year has so changed our dear Calyste." "Changed him, how?" asked the baron. "He reads all sorts of books." "Ah! ah!" exclaimed the baron, "so that's why he has given up hunting and riding." "Her morals are very reprehensible, and she has taken a man's name," added Madame du Guenic.
She even went so far as to conceal the sort of sacrifice to which she consented every evening in allowing her page to burn in the Guenic hall that singular gingerbread-colored candle called an oribus which is still used in certain parts of western France. Thus this rich old maid was nobility, pride, and grandeur personified.
When, on a stormy night after parting from MADAME, the father, son, and servant returned to the house in Guerande, they took their friends and the baroness and old Mademoiselle du Guenic by surprise, although the latter, by the exercise of senses with which the blind are gifted, recognized the steps of the three men in the little lane leading to the house.
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