All that she had gone
upon was the fact of their residence in the same house, and that a
servant of hers had heard from a servant of ours that M. le Baron
gave her his hand to go in to dinner every day when there were no
visitors.
It all became plain then. The intendant's wife, who had never
forgiven me for taking her victim away from her, had suggested this
hint as an excuse for withdrawing the Countess from me, without
obliging the Count to keep house with her, and becoming the attentive
husband, who seemed, to his perverted notions, a despicable being.
Perhaps neither of them had expected the matter to be taken up so
seriously, and an old country-bred Huguenot as Madame Croquelebois
had originally been, thought that as we were at Court, gallantry was
our natural atmosphere.
Having brought them to confession, we divided them. My mother talked
to the intendante, and made her perceive what a wicked, cruel
injustice and demoralization she was leading her beloved young Count
into committing, injuring herself and his children, till the woman
actually wept, and allowed that she had not thought of it; she wanted
to gratify him, and she felt it hard and ungrateful that she should
not watch over his wife and children as his grandmother had always
intended.
On my side I had M. d'Aubepine, and at last I worked down to the
Armand I had known at Nancy, not indeed the best of subjects, but
still infinitely better than the conceited, reckless man who had
appeared at first.
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