It would be impossible to recount the long catalogue of M. de Montrond's triumphs after this. He became the idol of fashion--as much with the Directoire as he had been with the old court--and under the patronage of Madame Tallien he was permitted to carry amongst the stern republicans the habits and morals of the Régence. It was at this moment of his life that the one act of expiation of the past took place. He worked with right good-will for the benefit of the exiled nobles, many of whom were recalled through his influence, which was so great that he found means to persuade the unkempt rulers of the Republic to invite to their banquets the pardoned émigrés, and to show that they felt no rancor and experienced no dread. We were about to follow the example of Montrond himself, and forget that he was married--"just as little as possible," as he was wont to say, but legally, notwithstanding. He married during the Revolutionary movement a _grande dame_, a divorced lady, a certain Duchesse de Fleury, who had sought in this union nothing more than the protection of her property against the name of her first husband, through which it would have been infallibly condemned to confiscation. Many of the great ladies of that time had done likewise, thus defrauding the Republic. But the Duchesse de Fleury neglected the most important precaution of all--that of securing protection against the protector she had chosen, who at once seized the property--more gayly perhaps, but quite as effectually as the Republic would have done. The terms of the marriage-contract may be quoted as a specimen of the motives by which the premier gentilhomme de France was governed in the transaction. After the declaration that the Duchesse de Fleury had brought to the _communauté_ certain houses and lands, besides an income of forty thousand livres, we find added by way of set-off to this fortune that the count engaged himself to bring yearly the sum of a hundred thousand francs--the produce of his wits. After a little while, the premier gentilhomme having exercised the said wits in spending the produce of the houses and lands of Madame de Fleury, and Madame de Fleury not being able to return the compliment by selling the wits of the Count de Montrond, the two went on their respective ways, leaving to Providence the task of redeeming the lands which the wits had sold and the income which the wits had scattered to the four winds of heaven.