"For days I busied myself, preparing for the reception of Claude. His old room was put in order by my own hands. Alas! I could little foresee that he was never to tread its floor again! In fact, the unhappy Lucrece was the victim of an absorbing and corroding jealousy; and in her heart she was beginning to hate and to loathe her guileless and unsuspecting sister. To add to this evil feature in our mutual relations, when I ventured timidly to speak of Claude’s engagement to my father, he became inflamed with sudden fury. All the buried pride of the old days of the monarchy—the days of periwigs and pasteboard skirts, of shoe-buckles and rapiers—with the memory of past greatness, and the time when the Constable and Dukes of Bourbon had joined our forefathers in the chase, and shared their hospitality in Chaverondier—all this I saw blazed up within him! His eyes flashed with fire, and his thin bent form became erect. He had been proud of his son’s brilliant career under Canrobert; he had pictured for him a brilliant future; he already saw him ranked among the marshals of France, reviving the past glories of ancestors who had left their bones at Pavia, Rocroi and Ramilies. "But now he thought all those ancient triumphs and those revived hopes would be blighted and blotted by a disgraceful marriage with a mere _bourgeoise_—a vulgar smelter of iron—a man who had begun life with a hammer and bellows; a grimy manufacturer of spades, ploughs, and pickaxes for the markets of Beaujeu, Belleville, and Chalieu! "My father thought of his sixteen heraldic quarters, among which were the arms of Cressi, Sante-Croix, and Segonzoe, the three noblest families in Beaujolais, and swore by the souls of his fathers that such a marriage could never be. He did more. He wrote a severe and sarcastic letter to the maire of Beaujeu, warning him of his most severe displeasure, if the correspondence between his daughter and ’Monsieur my son, the Captain Chaverondier,’ was not at once and for ever ended. To have read that letter might have made one think that the Grand Monarque was still flirting at the Trianon, and that the fleur-de-lis still waved above the Bastille of St. Antoine. On the other hand the maire Montallé was a sturdy and purse-proud republican; one who in his youth had fought at the barricades, had sacked the Tuileries, and had actually beaten on his drum, by order of Santerre, to drown the dying words of the son of St. Louis! So he retorted in a manner which I do not choose to repeat; but therewith ended all the hopes of the sweet and gentle Cecile, and of my brave brother, who was travelling, as fast as the railway trains could fly, through the provinces from Marseilles, to see us all, and his own happy home again.