I
forgot that at twenty-two there is much life yet to come, and that
one may go through many a vicissitude of feeling even though one's
heart be in a grave.
The old Marquis did not long remain with us. He caught a severe cold
in the winter, and had no strength to rally. Tryphena would have it
that he sank from taking nothing but tisanes made of herbs; and that
if she might only have given him a good hot sack posset, he would
have recovered; but he shuddered at the thought, and when a doctor
came from Saumur, he bled the poor old gentleman, faintings came on,
and he died the next day. I was glad Tryphena's opinion was only
expressed in English.
The poor old man had been very kind to me, and had made me love him
better than I should have supposed to be possible when we crossed
from Dover. The very last thing he had done was to write to my
mother, placing his hotel at Paris at her disposal in case she and
her son should find it expedient to leave England; and when his will
was opened it proved that he had left me personal guardian and
manager of the estates of his heir, my little Gaspard, now M. de
Nidemerle, joining no one with me in the charge but my half-brother
the Baron de Solivet.
I had helped him, read letters to him, and written them for him, and
overlooked his accounts enough for the work not to be altogether new
and strange to me, and I took it up eagerly. I had never forgotten
the sermon by the holy Father Vincent, whom the Church has since
acknowledged as a saint, and our excellent Abbe had heightened the
impression that a good work lay prepared for me; but he warned me to
be prudent, and I am afraid I was hot-headed and eager.
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