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"Will you speak, Ferdinand?" said the Duke de Chaulieu to his friend. "That wretch is an object of fear," said the Duc de Grandlieu, "for he has possessed himself, so as to be able to levy blackmail, of the letters written by Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse to Lucien Chardon, that man's tool.
In presence of that decay, the nephew remained as cold and impassible as the diplomatists of 1814 during the convulsions of imperial France. Philippe, who did not believe in Napoleon II., now wrote the following letter to the minister of war, which Mariette made the Duc de Maufrigneuse convey to that functionary: Monseigneur, Napoleon is no more.
This speech is the moral of my story from the aristocratic point of view. "That is past and over," said the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. "Now we must think of saving that poor Madame de Serizy, Clotilde, and me " "We can but wait for Henri; I have sent to him. But everything really depends on the man Gentil is gone to fetch. God grant that man may be in Paris!
There was joy that evening among the Collection of Antiquities. They talked over the young Count's success. So discreet were they with regard to Mme. de Maufrigneuse, that the one man who heard the secret was the Chevalier. There was no financial postscript at the end of the letter, no unpleasant reference to the sinews of war, which every young man makes in such a case. Mlle.
So you do not know what is going on in the world?" continued she, seeing the amazement in their faces. "Victurnien has been in Paris; he knows how things go there. We had more influence under Napoleon. Marry Mlle. Duval, Victurnien; she will be just as much Marquise d'Esgrignon as I am Duchesse de Maufrigneuse." "All is lost even honor!" said the Chevalier, with a wave of the hand.
Two hours later, my mother and I, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Mme. d'Espard, were all four blooming like roses in the front of the box. I had seated myself sideways, giving only a shoulder to the house, so that I could see everything, myself unseen, in that spacious box which fills one of the two angles at the back of the hall, between the columns.
Madame de Serizy had carried him off from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who, it was said, had "thrown him over," one of the phrases by which women avenge themselves on happiness they envy. Lucien was in the lap, so to speak, of the High Almoner's set, and intimate with women who were the Archbishop's personal friends. He was modest and reserved; he waited patiently.
In short, the affairs of this great family were in as bad a state as those of the elder branch of the Bourbons. This woman, so celebrated under her first name of Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, very wisely decided to live in retirement, and to make herself, if possible, forgotten.
This chapel, now destroyed, was rebuilt in the Rue de Bourgogne, pending the building of a Gothic church to be dedicated to Sainte-Clotilde. On hearing the first words spoken in her ear by Diane de Maufrigneuse, this saintly lady went to find Monsieur de Grandlieu, and brought him back at once.
When one thinks of what the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had been under the Restoration, one of the queens of Paris, a dazzling queen, whose luxurious existence equalled that of the richest women of fashion in London, there was something touching in the sight of her in that humble little abode in the rue de Miromesnil, a few steps away from her splendid mansion, which no amount of fortune had enabled her to keep, and which the hammer of speculators has since demolished.
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