Not understanding what he meant, or comprehending in the slightest degree why the birth of a girl should give him less satisfaction than if a son had been born, I ran to the room of Monsieur la Tour, and told him what had happened; and then it was, for the first time, that I was made to understand how great was the difference made by the customs of the world between two classes of beings naturally equal. A vague idea, too, of my own circumstances was also communicated to my mind, and from that time the change which had taken place, and which daily increased, in the deportment of my cousin's servants towards me, was marked, understood, and felt painfully. Two days after the birth of his daughter the baron again left the chateau, but he remained long enough to make me feel most bitterly that I was no longer the boy that he had sported with and loved in former years. The lady soon recovered, and resumed her care of me without a change. She loved to have me with her; she loved to see me play with her infant; and, as month after month proceeded, the child's affection for me grew stronger and more strong, till there was none but her mother that she loved so well. About a year and a half afterward a son was born; and then another; and from the birth of the first I found that I was no longer an object of consideration to any one except to the good clergyman, whose affection towards me seemed to increase as that of others diminished, and to the sweet lady, who never for a moment, in her love and care for others, forgot her love and care for me. A change had come over the whole household, however; the lover had long been forgotten in the husband, the husband had been forgotten in the man of pleasure. Whenever any short cessation of hostilities permitted him to visit the capital, it was in Paris that the Lord of Blancford's time was wholly spent, and at other periods his days were passed in the pleasures of other great towns, afar from the family which required his care and direction, and from the wife whose love he had cast away. On her part, she showed not the slightest inclination to depart from his expressed wish that she would remain at the chateau of Blancford. She loved not great cities; she sought not to indemnify herself for her husband's neglect by following the same evil course in which he led: she enjoyed fully and entirely the pleasures of rural life, and found in the duties of a mother the greatest consolation and delight. Once in the course of the month, perhaps, she visited Bordeaux with the state becoming her rank and station, called upon some of the chief ladies of the city, and returned home after having remained there but a few hours. Very frequently, on these occasions, I accompanied her, and the kindness with which she mentioned me to all who were really good and estimable, seemed to bespeak for me their future protection and regard, although she never even hinted at such an object.