One day he met at the miller's house a young girl whom the family called Mademoiselle Amélie. She had come to renew her broken health in the fresh country air. René, standing now by the river, recalled his first vision of her, and fairylike memories flitted through his brain like a swarm of golden butterflies. Was she more beautiful than Geneviève? He could not answer, but he knew well that thoughts associated with the personality of Geneviève were impossible in the atmosphere of Amélie, for not only was she different from the miller's daughter, but from all women he had known. Only on cameos, medallions, rare miniatures and enamelled boxes had he beheld her patrician type of beauty. Her eyes, tenderly imperious and her lips of regal sweetness never failed to quicken in him an adoring mood. So great was his infatuation that he did not seek to ascertain her origin, for she seemed to have descended from heaven. One circumstance, however, forced itself on his attention, namely that while the miller's daughter treated Amélie as a companion, Adhemar himself evinced toward her a deference which closely approached reverence. "She is the daughter," he would say, "of persons who protected me during my exile." How sweet had been those days! He recalled the walks during the summer along the river bank fringed with lilies and reeds and shaded by the languid foliage of willows, her arm intertwined in his, their feet moving rhythmically together; and then the return home in the moonlight with the perfume of honey-suckle and wild mint in their faces. In his ravishment he failed to note the satirical remarks and jealous glances of Geneviève. His eyes were for Amélie only who, pale at first like a wilted rose, rapidly recovered health and animation. What most captivated him was her air of distinction, her native dignity, her manners of a _grande dame_, so unaccountable in a girl of obscure origin. He said to himself that, compared with Amélie, the arrogant Duchess de Rousillon, his mother, was a woman most ordinary, almost vulgar. It was not long before the news spread throughout the district that the Marquis de Brezé, the best match in the country, was to wed a young foreign girl of low extraction who had, in charity, been given an asylum at the mill. The Duchess de Rousillon was absent in Paris at the time, for the purpose of securing from the government of the Restoration the return of properties confiscated during the Reign of Terror. One morning as the young Marquis was tranquilly sleeping, dreaming, perhaps, of his fair Dulcinea, his arm was roughly shaken and he opened his eyes upon the angry countenance of his mother, who held toward him an open letter. There was no signature, but René recognized the coarse scrawls and crude expressions of Geneviève. It was addressed to the Duchess and announced the intended marriage of her son to an adventuress who had found refuge at the mill.