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Updated: June 28, 2025
The Lavilettes immediately became pensioners of his affections. The first hour of his coming he himself did not know which sister his ample heart was spending itself on most Sophie, with her English face, and slow, docile, well-bred manner, or Christine, dark, petite, impertinent, gay-hearted, wilful, unsparing of her tongue for others or for herself.
Sophie and Farcinelle presently withdrew also. In five minutes the crowd had scattered, and the Lavilettes and Mr. Ferrol returned to the house. Meanwhile, as they passed up the street, the droning, vibrating voice of the bear-leader came floating along the air and through the voices of the crowd like the thread of motive in the movement of an opera.
Vague reports came to the village concerning the Rebellion. There were not a dozen people in the village who espoused the British cause; and these few were silent. For the moment the Lavilettes were popular. Nicolas had made for them a sort of grand coup. He had for the moment redeemed the snobbishness of two generations.
He had that touch of shrewdness to save him from fatuity where the Lavilettes were concerned. He was determined to associate with the ceremony all the primitive customs of the country. He had come of a race of simple farmers, and he was consistent enough to attempt to live up to the traditions of his people.
Just beside the front door was a bush of purple lilac; and over the door, in copper, was the coat-of-arms of the Lavilettes, placed there, at Madame's insistence, in spite of the dying wish of Lavilette's father, a feeble, babbling old gentleman in knee-breeches, stock, and swallow-tailed coat, who, broken down by misfortune, age and loneliness, had gathered himself together for one last effort for becomingness against his daughter-in-law's false tastes and had died the day after.
That night, while gaiety and feasting went on at the Lavilettes', there was another sort of feasting under way at the house of Shangois, the notary. On one side of a tiny fire in the chimney, over which hung a little black kettle, sat Shangois and Vanne Castine.
Behind the Manor Casimbault and the Seigneury, thus flanking the church at reverential distance, another large house completed the acute triangle, forming the apex of the solid wedge of settlement drawn about the church. This was the great farmhouse of the Lavilettes, one of the most noticeable families in the parish.
Probably, in spite of everything, Monsieur Lavilette and his family would have succeeded better socially had it not been for one or two unpopular lawsuits brought by the Lavilettes against two neighbours, small farmers, one of whom was clearly in the wrong, and the other as clearly in the right.
It was that which made her give a little jerky bow to the miller and the postmaster when she passed the mill. "Come, dusty-belly," said Baby, "what's all this pom-pom of the Lavilettes?" The miller pursed out his lips, contracted his brows, and arranged his loose waistcoat carefully on his fat stomach. "Money," said he, oracularly, as though he had solved the great question of the universe.
Besides, if the Rebellion did not succeed, disgrace must come, and then good-bye to the progress of the Lavilettes, and goodbye, maybe, to her son! In spite of disappointments and rebuffs in many quarters, she still kept faith with her ambitions, and, fortunately for herself, she did not see the abject failure of many of her schemes.
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