Her husband, a man of worth and of note in the parliament of Paris, died on the very eve of the great troubles, December 1, 1788. He was then in his sixty-seventh year, and as he had done nothing but good at Pinon, not only embellishing the chateau and the park, but giving much time and money to improve the condition of the people, he would probably have been sent to the guillotine at Paris by the local 'directory at Chauny' had he lived long enough, and his property confiscated, like the property of the bishops and dukes at Anizy. His oldest son was a lad of fifteen when the storm burst in 1789. His mother took his interests resolutely in hand. She came of two aristocratic stocks, the Millys and the Clermonts-Tonnerre, but she got the better of the democrats. Like old Madame Dupin at Chenonceaux, she carried herself and her property, by woman's wit and woman's will, through the Revolution. In 1791 she contrived to get her son, then only seventeen, elected commander of the National Guard at Anizy. He ripened rapidly, under the stress of the times, bought up the 'patriots' when it was necessary--and there is abundant evidence to show that they were always in the market, even at Paris and during the worst times of the Terror--was made a baron of the empire by Napoleon, elected President of the Canton of Anizy in 1811, a councillor-general of the Aisne in the same year, and deputy in 1814. With the Restoration he became once more Vicomte de Courval and seigneur of Pinon, having long before converted the park and gardens of the chateau into the 'English style,' with fine watercourses and an extensive lake, and died quietly at Paris in 1822. In 1794, at the age of twenty, he married a daughter of the Marquis de Saint-Mars.