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Updated: June 6, 2025
On the death of Louis XVIII. he returned to Guerande, and became, after a while, mayor of the city. The rector, the chevalier, and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had regularly passed their evenings for the last fifteen years at the hotel de Guenic, where the other noble personages of the neighborhood also came.
The people of Guerande feigned utter ignorance of the baron's existence. In the whole course of twenty years not a single indiscreet word was ever uttered. Mademoiselle du Guenic received the rents and sent them to her brother by fishermen. Monsieur du Guenic returned to Guerande in 1813, as quietly and simply as if he had merely passed a season at Nantes.
Carried away by the fervor of youth, electrified by his intercourse with the Georges, the Billardiere, Montauran, Bauvan, Longuy, Manda, Bernier, du Guenic, and the Fontaines, Cesar flung himself into the conspiracy by which the royalists and the terrorists combined on the 13th Vendemiaire against the expiring Convention.
The poor and noble house of Guenic little knew with what an adversary it was attempting to compete, or what amount of fortune was necessary to enter the lists against the silverware, the delicate porcelain, the beautiful linen, the silver-gilt service brought from Paris by Mademoiselle des Touches, and the science of her cook.
Each of the chiefs found means to let the marquis know, in a more or less ingenious manner, the exaggerated price they set upon their services. One modestly demanded the governorship of Brittany; another a barony; this one a promotion; that one a command; and all wanted pensions. "Well, baron," said the marquis to Monsieur du Guenic, "don't you want anything?"
Mademoiselle du Guenic had understood and fully adopted this hope which Mademoiselle des Touches now threatened to overthrow. The baroness heard midnight strike, with tears; her mind conceived of many horrors during the next hour, for the clock struck one, and Calyste was still not at home. "Will he stay there?" she thought. "It would be the first time. Poor child!"
"The Baron du Guenic fails," was a phrase that opened the conversation in many houses. "How is Thisbe?" asked Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel of the chevalier, as soon as the cards were dealt. "The poor little thing is like her master," replied the chevalier; "she has some nervous trouble, she goes on three legs constantly. See, like this."
A friend of Zephirine du Guenic, Jacqueline de Pen-Hoel, brought up to adore the Breton grandeur of the du Guenics, had formed, ever since the birth of Calyste, the plan of transmitting her property to the chevalier by marrying him to whichever of her nieces the Vicomtesse de Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel, their mother, would bestow upon him.
The old and loyal Breton was now a man of seventy-three; but his long-continued guerilla warfare with the Republic, his exile, the perils of his five crossings through a turbulent sea in open boats, had weighed upon his head, and he looked a hundred; therefore, at no period had the chief of the house of Guenic been more in keeping with the worn-out grandeur of their dwelling, built in the days when a court reigned at Guerande.
The tax-gatherer now writes the name, as do the rest of the world, du Guenic. At the end of a silent, damp, and gloomy lane may be seen the arch of a door, or rather gate, high enough and wide enough to admit a man on horseback, a circumstance which proves of itself that when this building was erected carriages did not exist. The arch, supported by two jambs, is of granite.
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