shooting rights to some account by dividing them into shares of five
hundred francs value, which his friends eagerly purchased. The income
derived from this source was, however, but a meagre one. Apart from the
woods there was only uncultivated land on the estate, marshes, patches of
sand, and fields of stones; and for centuries past the opinion of the
district had been that no agriculturist could ever turn the expanse to
good account. The defunct army contractor alone had been able to picture
there a romantic park, such as he had dreamt of creating around his regal
abode. It was he, by the way, who had obtained an authorization to add to
the name of Seguin that of Du Hordel--taken from a ruined tower called
the Hordel which stood on the estate.

It was through Beauchene, one of the shareholders of the shooting rights,
that Mathieu had made Seguin's acquaintance, and had discovered the old
hunting-box, the lonely, quiet pavilion, which had pleased him so much
that he had rented it. Valentine, who good-naturedly treated Marianne as
a poor friend, had even been amiable enough to visit her there, and had
declared the situation of the place to be quite poetical, laughing the
while over her previous ignorance of it like one who had known nothing of
her property. In reality she herself would not have lived there for an
hour. Her husband had launched her into the feverish life of literary,
artistic, and social Paris, hurrying her to gatherings, studios,
exhibitions, theatres, and other pleasure resorts--all those brasier-like
places where weak heads and wavering hearts are lost. He himself, amid
all his passion for show, felt bored to death everywhere, and was at ease
only among his horses; and this despite his pretensions with respect to
advanced literature and philosophy, his collections of curios, such as
the bourgeois of to-day does not yet understand, his furniture, his
pottery, his pewter-work, and particularly his bookbindings, of which he
was very proud. And he was turning his wife into a copy of himself,