"Pray be seated," said the old lady, taking her place on the couch; "pray be seated, my cousin. I call you cousin, though we are not related, and cannot be, as Jeanne de Porhoët and Hugues de Champcey were so ill-advised as to leave no issue. But, with your permission, I should like to treat you as a cousin when we are alone, if only to make me forget for a moment that I am alone in the world. "So, cousin, I see how you are situated; the case is a hard one, most assuredly. But I will suggest one or two reflections which have solaced me, and which I think are likely to bring consolation to you. "In the first place, my dear marquis, I often tell myself that among all the charlatans and ex-lackeys one now sees rolling in carriages, poverty has a peculiar perfume of distinction and good taste. And also I am inclined to believe that God has brought some of us down to a poor and narrow life, that this coarse, materialistic, money-grubbing age may have before it the type of a merit, dignity, and splendour which owes nothing to money, that money cannot buy—that is not for sale. In all probability, my cousin, such is the providential justification of your situation and of mine." I conveyed to Mlle. de Porhoët my satisfaction at having been chosen with her to give the world the noble example it needs so much, and shows itself so ready to profit by. "For my own part," she went on, "I am inured to privation, and I do not feel it much. When, in the course of a life that has been too long, one has seen a father and four brothers, worthy of their father, perish before their time, by sword or bullet; when one has lost, one by one, all the objects of one’s affection and worship, one must have a very paltry soul to be much concerned about more or less ample meals and more or less dainty clothing. Certainly, marquis, you may be sure that if my personal comfort only were at stake, I should not trouble about my Spanish millions; but to me it seems but right and proper and exemplary that a house like mine should not disappear without leaving some permanent sign, some striking monument of its grandeur and its faith. And that is why, cousin, I have, in imitation of some of my ancestors, thought of the pious foundation of which you must have heard, and which, while I have life, I shall not relinquish." Assured of my sympathy, the noble old lady seemed to lose herself in meditation, and as she looked sadly at the fading portraits of her ancestors, only the beat of the hereditary clock broke the silence of midnight in the dim room. "There will be," Mlle. de Porhoët suddenly resumed, in a solemn voice, "there will be a chapter of regular canons attached to the church. Each day at matins, a mass will be said in the private chapel of my family, for the repose of my soul and the souls of my ancestors. The feet of the celebrant priest will tread a slab of unlettered marble, which will form the step of the altar and cover my ashes."