figure, he married Mademoiselle de Kergarouet, without a fortune, but
belonging to one of the oldest families in Brittany.

When the second revolution burst on Monsieur de Fontaine he was
encumbered with a large family. Though it was no part of the noble
gentlemen's views to solicit favors, he yielded to his wife's wish,
left his country estate, of which the income barely sufficed to
maintain his children, and came to Paris. Saddened by seeing the
greediness of his former comrades in the rush for places and dignities
under the new Constitution, he was about to return to his property
when he received a ministerial despatch, in which a well-known
magnate announced to him his nomination as marechal de camp, or
brigadier-general, under a rule which allowed the officers of the
Catholic armies to count the twenty submerged years of Louis XVIII.'s
reign as years of service. Some days later he further received, without
any solicitation, ex officio, the crosses of the Legion of Honor and of
Saint-Louis.

Shaken in his determination by these successive favors, due, as he
supposed, to the monarch's remembrance, he was no longer satisfied
with taking his family, as he had piously done every Sunday, to cry
"Vive le Roi" in the hall of the Tuileries when the royal family
passed through on their way to chapel; he craved the favor of a
private audience. The audience, at once granted, was in no sense
private. The royal drawing-room was full of old adherents, whose
powdered heads, seen from above, suggested a carpet of snow. There the
Count met some old friends, who received him somewhat coldly; but the
princes he thought ADORABLE, an enthusiastic expression which escaped
him when the most gracious of his masters, to whom the Count had
supposed himself to be known only by name, came to shake hands with