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Updated: June 22, 2025
For some time past I have been thinking of asking you to paint a portrait of my daughter," continued M. de Nailles, who had in fact had no more wish for the portrait than he had had to be a deputy, until it had been put into his head. But the women of his household, little or big, could persuade him into anything. "I really don't think I have the time now," said Marien.
The accompanying card ran thus: "The Baroness de Nailles has the honor to inform you of the marriage of Mademoiselle Jacqueline de Nailles, her stepdaughter, to M. Frederic d'Argy." Congratulations showered down on both mother and stepmother. A love-match is nowadays so rare!
She, too, was selling flowers, while at the same time she was helping Madame de Nailles with her toys; but she was selling with that decorum and graceful reserve which custom prescribes for young girls. "Fred, I do hope you will wear no roses but mine. Those you have are frightful. They make you look like a village bridegroom. Take out those things; come!
I will do my best not to guess, then," said the good-natured Clotilde, with a laugh. "And I assure you, for my part, that I am discretion itself," said M. de Nailles. So saying, he drew his wife's arm within his own, and the three passed gayly together into the dining-room.
But in a week he was quite reconciled to the idea of keeping Mademoiselle de Nailles all the summer at the Chateau de Fresne. Never had Giselle known him to take so much trouble to be amiable, and indeed Jacqueline saw him much more to advantage at home than in Paris, where, as she had often said, he diffused too strong an odor of the stables.
"Never," he thought, "was it half so pretty when worn by Madame de Nailles as by her stepdaughter." Jacqueline meantime went on talking. "You must know I was rather perplexed what to do almost all mamma's gowns made me look horribly too old. Modeste tried them on me one after another. We burst out laughing, they seemed so absurd. And then we were afraid mamma might chance to want the one I took.
He stammered, he made excuses, he owned that he had been to blame, that he had been very stupid, and he begged her pardon. Why not send it at once to Grandchaux? In short, he would do anything she wished, provided she would leave off crying. But Madame de Nailles continued to weep. Her husband was forced at last to leave her and to return to Jacqueline, who stood petrified in the salon.
Thus assured of making her own living, she could afford to despise the discreditable happiness of Madame de Nailles, who, she had no doubt, would shortly become Madame Marien; also the crooked ways in which M. de Cymier might pursue his fortune-hunting.
At this moment a man with brown hair, tall, elegant, and with his moustache turned up at the ends, after the old fashion of the Valois, revived recently, came hurriedly up to the table of Madame de Nailles. Fred felt that that inimitable moustache reduced his not yet abundant beard to nothing.
"Monsieur l'Abbe," she said, without any preamble, while he begged her to sit down, "I have come to speak to you of a person in whom you take an interest, Jacqueline de Nailles." He passed the back of his hand over his brow and said, with a sigh: "Poor little thing!" "She is even more to be pitied than you think. You have not seen her, I believe, since last week." "Yes she came.
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