During the month succeeding that day Caroline saw very little of M. de Villemer. He was obliged to be occupied with the details of settling his brother's debts; then he absented himself. He told his mother that he was going to Normandy to see a certain historical castle whose plan was necessary for his work, and he set out in quite an opposite direction, confiding to the Duke alone that he was going in the strictest incognito to see his son. As for the Duke himself, he was very busy with the change of his pecuniary position. He sold his horses, his furniture and personal property, discharged his lackeys, and came, at the request of his mother, to install himself provisionally, for economy's sake, in a suite of apartments between the ground floor and the first story of her hotel, which was going to be sold also, but with the reservation that the Marquis should remain for ten years the principal tenant, and that nothing should be changed in the apartments of his mother. Urbain himself had ascended to the third story and piled up his books in a lodging more than modest, protesting that he had never been better off, and that he had a magnificent view of the Champs-Élysées. During his absence the preparations for the departure to the country were made, and Mlle de Saint-Geneix wrote to her sister: "I am counting the days which separate us from the blissful time when I can at last walk to my heart's content, and breathe a pure air. I have enough of flowers which faint and die upon the mantels; I am thirsty for those which bloom in the open fields." VII LETTER FROM THE MARQUIS DE VILLEMER TO THE DUKE D'ALÉRIA. POLIGNAC, _via_ LE PUY (HAUTE-LOIRE), May 1, '45. The address I give you is a secret which I intrust to you, and which I am happy to intrust to you. If by any unforeseen accident I should chance to die, away from you, you would know that your first duty would be to send hither and see that the child was not neglected by the people in whose charge I have placed him. These people do not know who I am; they know neither my name nor my country; they are not aware even that the child is mine. That these precautions are necessary, I have already told you. M. de G---- clings to suspicions which would naturally lead him to doubt the legitimacy of his daughter,--really his own, nevertheless. This fear was the torture of their unhappy mother, to whom I swore that the existence of Didier should be concealed until Laura's fortune had been assured. I have noticed more than once the uneasy curiosity with which my movements have been watched. I cannot therefore cloud them too much in mystery.