something to this little store by way of acknowledging the cashier's
services, until in 1824 the latter had a credit of fifty-eight
thousand francs. In was then that Charles Mignon, Comte de La Bastie,
a title he never used, crowned his cashier with the final happiness of
residing at the Chalet, where at the time when this story begins
Madame Mignon and her daughter were living in obscurity.

The deplorable state of Madame Mignon's health was caused in part by
the catastrophe to which the absence of her husband was due. Grief had
taken three years to break down the docile German woman; but it was a
grief that gnawed at her heart like a worm at the core of a sound
fruit. It is easy to reckon up its obvious causes. Two children, dying
in infancy, had a double grave in a soul that could never forget. The
exile of her husband to Siberia was to such a woman a daily death. The
failure of the rich house of Wallenrod, and the death of her father,
leaving his coffers empty, was to Bettina, then uncertain about the
fate of her husband, a terrible blow. The joy of Charles's return came
near killing the tender German flower. After that the second fall of
the Empire and the proposed expatriation acted on her feelings like a
renewed attack of the same fever. At last, however, after ten years of
continual prosperity, the comforts of her house, which was the finest
in Havre, the dinners, balls, and fetes of a prosperous merchant, the
splendors of the villa Mignon, the unbounded respect and consideration
enjoyed by her husband, his absolute affection, giving her an
unrivalled love in return for her single-minded love for him,--all
these things brought the woman back to life. At the moment when her
doubts and fears at last left her, when she could look forward to the
bright evening of her stormy life, a hidden catastrophe, buried in the
heart of the family, and of which we shall presently make mention,
came as the precursor of renewed trials.