The first class was represented by the Collard family, to whom I have already alluded in connection with my childhood. Of the three madcap young girls who roamed the forest of Villers-Cotterets as free as the butterflies and swallows, two had become wives: one, Caroline, had married the Baron Capelle; the other, Hermine, had married the Baron de Martens; Louise, the third, who was but fifteen, was the most captivating little maiden imaginable. Their mother--whose birth and history as the daughter of Madame de Genlis and the Duc d'Orléans I have related--and her three children were the aristocratic centre round which the young men and maidens of the neighbouring castles revolved; and among the former of these were some of the best blood in the country--the Montbretons, the Courvals, and the Mornays. None of these families lived in Villers-Cotterets itself: they lived in the castles around. Only on great occasions did the hives swarm and then we saw these golden-winged bees flying about the streets of the town and down the avenues of the park. The second class was represented by the Deviolaine family. Two out of the five daughters of M. Deviolaine were married, as I have said--namely, Léontine and Éléonore; three remained, Cécile, Augustine and Louise. Cécile was twenty years of age, Augustine sixteen; Louise was still a mere child. Cécile had preserved her whimsical and capricious spirits, the same mocking and animated features; her actions were more masculine than feminine; her complexion was tanned by the sun, as she never took the trouble to protect herself from its rays. Augustine, on the contrary, had a skin as white as milk, large tranquil blue eyes, dark chestnut hair, forming an admirable framework round her face, sloping shoulders charmingly moulded, and a figure that was not too slender; unlike her sister Cécile, she was gracefully feminine in all her ways. Raphael would have been puzzled to choose between her and Louise Collard for a model for his Madonna, and like the Greek sculptor, he would have selected beautiful points from them both to reach that perfect standard to which Art everywhere attains when it surpasses Nature.