Visitors wanting to see him commonly found him there, and often the
two boys on their return from school resorted thither. Thus the
ground-floor rooms were a sort of sanctuary where the father and sons
spent their time from the hour of dinner till the next day, and his
domestic life was carefully closed against the public eye.

His only servants were a cook--an old woman who had long been attached
to his family--and a man-servant forty years old, who was with him
when he married Mademoiselle de Blamont. His children's nurse had also
remained with them, and the minute care to which the apartment bore
witness revealed the sense of order and the maternal affections
expended by this woman in her master's interest, in the management of
his house, and the charge of his children. These three good souls,
grave, and uncommunicative folk, seemed to have entered into the idea
which ruled the Marquis' domestic life. And the contrast between their
habits and those of most servants was a peculiarity which cast an air
of mystery over the house, and fomented the calumny to which M.
d'Espard himself lent occasion. Very laudable motives had made him
determine never to be on visiting terms with any of the other tenants
in the house. In undertaking to educate his boys he wished to keep
them from all contact with strangers. Perhaps, too, he wished to avoid
the intrusion of neighbors.

In a man of his rank, at a time when the Quartier Latin was distracted
by Liberalism, such conduct was sure to rouse in opposition a host of
petty passions, of feelings whose folly is only to be measured by
their meanness, the outcome of porters' gossip and malevolent tattle
from door to door, all unknown to M. d'Espard and his retainers. His
man-servant was stigmatized as a Jesuit, his cook as a sly fox; the
nurse was in collusion with Madame Jeanrenaud to rob the madman. The