The father of Emilie and René, an attorney of Vouziers, had died a wretched death from the effects of intemperate habits. The practice having been sold and what little property there was realised, the widow, after paying all debts, found herself in possession of about fifty thousand francs. Feeling that life in Vouziers would recall too many bitter memories, Madame Vincy went to live in Paris with her two young children. She had a brother there, the Abbé Taconet, a priest of some eminence, who, though educated in the Ecole Normale, had suddenly, and without giving any reasons, entered into holy orders; the astonishment of his former comrades was, if possible, increased when they saw him, soon after leaving Saint-Sulpice, set up a school in the Rue Casette. A conscientious but very liberal Catholic, with strong leanings to Gallicanism, the Abbé Taconet had seen many families of the upper middle class hesitate between purely secular and purely religious colleges, not finding in either that combination of traditional Christianity and modern development they sought, and he had taken orders for the express purpose of carrying into effect a plan he had formed for realising that combination. The height of his ambition was reached on the day that he and two younger priests opened an ecclesiastical day school, which he christened the Ecole Saint-André, after his patron saint. The success that attended the Abbé's enterprise was so rapid that already, in the third year, two small one-horse omnibuses were required to fetch the pupils and take them back to their homes. This opportunity of giving her son, then ten years old, an exceptional education, was one of the reasons that led Madame Vincy to choose Paris for her residence, especially since Emilie's sixteen years promised the mother valuable aid in the discharge of her household duties. By the advice of the Abbé Taconet, whom the management of the school funds had made quite a business man, she invested her fifty thousand francs in Italian stocks, which at that time could be bought at sixty-five francs, thus securing her an income of two thousand eight hundred francs per year. The secret of the idolatrous affection which Emilie lavished upon her young brother lay almost entirely in the innumerable daily sacrifices entailed by the inadequacy of this amount, for in matters of love we pursue our sufferings as at cards we pursue our losses.