"Of course! I even know the heroine."

"Mme. de la Chanterie!"

"---- By her real name Mme. de Combray. I lived three months in her
house."

"Rue Chanoinesse?"

"No, not in the Rue Chanoinesse, where she did not live, any more than
she was the saintly woman of Balzac's novel;--but at her Château of
Tournebut d'Aubevoye near Gaillon!"

"Gracious, Moisson, tell me about it;" and without further solicitation,
Moisson told me the following story:

"My mother was a Brécourt, whose ancestor was a bastard of Gaston
d'Orleans, and she was on this account a royalist, and very proud of her
nobility. The Brécourts, who were fighting people, had never become
rich, and the Revolution ruined them completely. During the Terror my
mother married Moisson, my father, a painter and engraver, a plebeian
but also an ardent royalist, participating in all the plots for the
deliverance of the royal family. This explains the mésalliance. She
hoped, besides, that the monarchy, of whose reestablishment she had no
doubt, would recognise my father's services by ennobling him and
reviving the name of Brécourt, which was now represented only in the
female line. She always called herself Moisson de Brécourt, and bore me
a grudge for using only my father's name.

"In 1804, when I was eight years old, we were living on the island of