ONE:Owing to her brilliant success, to the affection and friendship which surrounded her wherever she went, to her absorbing interest in her art, the delightful places and society in which she spent her time, and also to her own sunny, light-hearted nature, her long life, in spite of certain serious domestic drawbacks and sorrows, was a very happy one. Her wonderful capacity for enjoyment, her appreciation of beauty in nature and art, the great interest she took in matters intellectual and political, her pleasure in the society of her numerous friends, and her ardent devotion to the religious and royalist principles of her youth, continued undiminished through the peaceful old age which terminated her brilliant career.One autumn night, after ten oclock, the beggar had not come in. They supposed the woman who took care of him had neglected to fetch him, and charitably waited till half-past. The sister cellarer sent for the keys, to take them, as usual, to the prioress, who would put them under her pillow. She was a demoiselle de Toustain, who, par parenthse, had had the golden ball of her prioresss staff engraved with the motto of her family, Tous-teints-de-sang (All stained with blood), which my aunt had thought out of place on an emblem of religious and pastoral office. She had remarked to the [372] Prioress, My dear daughter, a war-cry is always improper for a bride of Jesus Christ....
TWO:When Mme. de Bouzolz had a baby, she nursed her devotedly, and took the deepest interest in the child. But the height of bliss seemed to be attained when soon after she had a daughter herself, with which she was so enraptured and about which she made such a fuss, that one can well imagine how tiresome it must have been for the rest of the family. She thought of nothing else, would go nowhere, except to the wedding of her sister, Mme. du Roure, with M. de Thsan; and when in the following spring the poor little thing died after a short illness, she fell into a state of grief and despair which alarmed the whole family, who found it impossible to comfort her. She would sit by the empty cradle, crying, and making drawings in pastel of the child from memory after its portrait had been put away out of her sight. But her unceasing depression and lamentation so worried M. de Beaune that, seeing this, she left off talking about it, and he, hoping she was becoming [198] more resigned to the loss, proposed that she should begin again to go into society after more than a year of retirement. She consented, to please him, for as he would not leave her his life was, of course, very dull. But the effort and strain of it made her so ill that the next year she was obliged to go to Bagnres de Luchon. M. de Beaune, who was certainly a devoted father-in-law, went with her. Her mother and eldest sister came to visit her there; her husband travelled three hundred leagues, although he was ill at the time, to see how she was getting on, and in the autumn she was much better, and able to go to the wedding of her favourite sister, Rosalie, with the Marquis de Grammont.See this absurd Valence, on his knees to me, asking for the hand of my niece.
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