beside his sister, who had driven over in the notary's shabby
basket-chaise.

The Hotel d'Esgrignon in the town had been demolished; a couple of
factories now stood on the site of the aristocrat's house. So Maitre
Chesnel spent the Marquis' last bag of louis on the purchase of the
old-fashioned building in the square, with its gables, weather-vane,
turret, and dovecote. Once it had been the courthouse of the
bailiwick, and subsequently the presidial; it had belonged to the
d'Esgrignons from generation to generation; and now, in consideration
of five hundred louis d'or, the present owner made it over with the
title given by the Nation to its rightful lord. And so, half in jest,
half in earnest, the old house was christened the Hotel d'Esgrignon.

In 1800 little or no difficulty was made over erasing names from the
fatal list, and some few emigres began to return. Among the very first
nobles to come back to the old town were the Baron de Nouastre and his
daughter. They were completely ruined. M. d'Esgrignon generously
offered them the shelter of his roof; and in his house, two months
later, the Baron died, worn out with grief. The Nouastres came of
the best blood in the province; Mlle. de Nouastre was a girl of
two-and-twenty; the Marquis d'Esgrignon married her to continue his
line. But she died in childbirth, a victim to the unskilfulness of her
physician, leaving, most fortunately, a son to bear the name of the
d'Esgrignons. The old Marquis--he was but fifty-three, but adversity
and sharp distress had added months to every year--the poor old
Marquis saw the death of the loveliest of human creatures, a noble
woman in whom the charm of the feminine figures of the sixteenth
century lived again, a charm now lost save to men's imaginations. With
her death the joy died out of his old age. It was one of those