Throughout the succeeding months there followed a long-drawn-out war of words, enlivened by perpetual _drames de famille_. At one time Juliette was forcibly carried off by her father to Blérancourt, then brought back to Chauny by her mother, who desired the match and kept her at Chauny out of her father’s influence. He, unhappy man, worn out by domestic grief and political disappointment, fell ill, and during his illness once again narrowly escaped arrest. Finally, his wife and mother-in-law broke down his resistance. By their importunity they had rendered his life unbearable. In a moment of passion he seems to have said: “Very well, do what you will,” then to have given his formal consent, without which they could do nothing, and to have signed the fatal document which sealed Juliette’s unhappiness. Almost immediately Dr. Lambert repented; but it was too late, and all he could do was to signify his disapproval by absenting himself from the wedding. The unhappy subject of so much dissension had been reduced almost to welcome marriage even with so uncongenial a mate as M. Lamessine as one way of escape from perpetual family quarrels. But alas! experience proved that Dr. Lambert’s objections to the union had been only too well founded. “The man whom they have chosen for your husband,” her father had written to her, “is not one whom you can ever love or who will ever love you.” With a delicate hand and in a few poignant phrases Mme. Adam in her _Souvenirs_ passes lightly over her married misery. Until after her daughter was born, in September 1854, she kept her sufferings to herself, dreading the anguish which a revelation of them would inflict on her loved ones. It was during her confinement at Blérancourt that Dr. Lambert discovered her unhappiness. Some months later, while she was visiting her granddaughter, it was borne in on Mme. Seron that she had committed the gravest of blunders in marrying Juliette against her will. Now that the last instalment of his wife’s dowry had been paid, M. Lamessine shamelessly avowed that he had never intended to keep his promise of receiving his wife’s grandmother as an inmate of his home every winter. “You imagine Juliette happy,” he said. “She is not. Our misunderstandings are perpetual. If we had you as a third, what would they be like?” “Is it true, Juliette, that you are unhappy?” “Yes,” she replied, “as unhappy as it is possible to be.” Mme. Seron rose. She leant against a piece of furniture to avoid falling, for she shook like a tree which has been uprooted. She reminded her son-in-law of his promises. “They were only necessary,” he remarked cynically, “as long as you had not completely fulfilled yours.” Mme. Seron left the house abruptly. Juliette never saw her again. She went home to Chauny to die. In eleven months she was followed by her husband, Dr. Seron, for, as he said, he could not live without “his dear scold” (_sa chère grondeuse_). * * * * *