"What advantage in carriages, and horses, and open gates, when we are surrounded by a desert?" "A desert? what do you mean?" "There is not a soul to speak to." "Not a soul--why, you are jesting; pray, is the Marquise de Pompignaud nobody? is the Conte de la Perriere nobody?" "_Worse_ than nobody, monsieur: I should prefer a desert to a wilderness haunted by such creatures." "_Sacre!_ what does the child want?" "What every wife in France commands--society, sir." "Well, I say you have got it: independently of your immediate domestic circle, you have a neighborhood such as ought to satisfy any reasonable person. There are persons fully as well descended as yourself, and others nearly as rich as I am, all within easy visiting distance." "The rich are all plebeians, and the nobles are all poor; there is and can be in a group so incongruous no cordiality, no gayety, no splendor; in a word, no such society as the last descendant of the Charrebourgs may reasonably aspire to." "It is fully as numerous and respectable, notwithstanding, as the society which the last descendant of the Charrebourgs enjoyed in the ancestral park where first I had the honor of making her acquaintance." "Yes; but not such as with my birth and beauty I might and _must_ have commanded, sir." "Well, what do you expect? These people won't give fetes." "Bring me to Paris, sir; I wish to take my place among the noble society, where I may meet my equals; and at court, where I may, like all my ancestry, see my sovereign. Here, sir, my days fly by in melancholy isolation; I am kept but to amuse your leisure; this, sir, is not indulgence--it is selfish and tyrannical." Monsieur Le Prun looked angrier and uglier than ever she had seen him before. His eyes looked more black and prominent, and his face a great deal paler. But he did not trust himself with an immediate answer; and his features, as if in the effort to restrain the retort his anger prompted, underwent several grotesque and somewhat ghastly contortions. His handsome wife, meanwhile, sat sullen and defiant, daring, rather than deprecating, the menaced explosion of his wrath. Their matrimonial bickerings, however, were not so soon to reach their climax. Monsieur Le Prun contrived to maintain a silent self-command--thrust his hands into his pockets, walked to the window humming an air, and after a few moments' pause, turned abruptly and left the room. Near the stair-head he met old Marguerite on her way to Lucille's apartments. He signed to her to follow him, and entered a chamber there. She perceived the unmistakable traces of angry excitement in his face--always sinister in an old man, but in one so powerful, and about whom she had heard so many dark rumors, full of vague terrors. As soon as he had closed the door, he said to her-- "I hope they make you comfortable here, Marguerite?" "Yes, sir, very comfortable," she replied, with a low courtesy, and trembling a good deal.