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Updated: June 4, 2025
Chesnel meanwhile drew the magistrate into a dark corner under the wall, and lowered his voice for his companion's ear. "If you are for the house of d'Esgrignon," he said, "Mme. la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, the Prince of Cadignan, the Ducs de Navarreins and de Lenoncourt, the Keeper of the Seals, the Chancellor, the King himself, will interest themselves in you.
The Duchesse de Langeais, a Navarreins by birth, came of a ducal house which had made a point of never marrying below its rank since the reign of Louis XIV. Every daughter of the house must sooner or later take a tabouret at Court. So, Antoinette de Navarreins, at the age of eighteen, came out of the profound solitude in which her girlhood had been spent to marry the Duc de Langeais' eldest son.
Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o'clock in the morning. From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither a duchess nor a Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had gone so far as to appear to be a woman.
Now, as the Navarreins had not yet resettled in France, it was sheer trickery that the young lawyer thus proposed to the old lady by suggesting to her that she should petition for an estate belonging to the elder branch of the family. "Monsieur," said the old woman with deceptive gravity, "bring the Comtesse de Vaudremont across to me.
But the winegrower lost so much time in impressing his identity on the Duke of Navarreins "and others," as he phrased it, that he came back to Sancerre, to his beloved vintage, without having obtained anything but offers of service. The Restoration had raised the nobility to such a degree of lustre as made La Baudraye wish to justify his ambitions by having an heir.
The old prince died some little time before the revolution of July aged eighty-seven. He had ruined his wife, and had long been on bad terms with the Duc de Navarreins, who had married his daughter for a first wife, and to whom he very reluctantly rendered his accounts. The Duc de Maufrigneuse, early in life, had had relations with the Duchesse d'Uxelles.
I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have a right to put him in the wrong." The Duc de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflections. "Since you speak of feeling, my child," he said, "let me remind you that a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by sentiments which do not touch ordinary people.
The Duc de Lenoncourt, the Duc de Navarreins, the Duc de Grandlieu, Rastignac, Blondet, the lovely Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, the Comte d'Escrignon, and des Lupeaulx, all the most influential people at Court in fact, had congratulated him on his conversion, and completed his intoxication. "Then there is no more to be said," d'Arthez rejoined.
"Also, a few lines from your uncle, written a day or two before he breathed his last, suggested what I could do for your mother, whom he loved very truly. Mesdames Popinot, de Rastignac, de Navarreins, d'Espard, de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, de Lenoncourt, and de la Batie have made a place for your mother as a Lady Superintendent of their charities.
"'The influence of the Duc de Navarreins would be very useful to me, with an all-powerful person in Russia, she went on, persuasion in every modulation of her voice, 'whose intervention I need in order to have justice done me in a matter that concerns both my fortune and my position in the world, that is to say, the recognition of my marriage by the Emperor.
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