her first steps as a young married woman with calm assurance, Nérins,
struck with admiration, was giving way, under the colonnade of the
Madeleine, to veritable transports of enthusiasm. He went from group to
group repeating:

"She is aerial! There is no other expression for her--aerial! She does
not walk, she glides! If she had the fantasy, with one little kick of
her heel, she could raise herself lightly over the heads of those two
tall fellows with spears, cross the Place de la Concorde, and go and
place herself on the pediment of the Chamber of Deputies. Look at her
well; that is true beauty, radiant beauty, blazing beauty! She is a
goddess, a young goddess! she will reign long, gentlemen--as long as
possible."

The young goddess, for the present, did not go farther than Lannilis, in
Poitou, to her husband's home--her home--in a mansion that had seen many
Duchesses of Lannilis, but never one more charming, and never, it must
be said, one more absolutely in love. This little duchess of nineteen
was wild about this little duke of twenty-five, who was jealously
carrying her off for himself alone to a quiet and solitary retreat.

They had arrived Thursday, the 24th of June, at about two o'clock--on an
exquisite night beneath a star-spangled sky--and they were suddenly
astounded at receiving a letter from their Aunt Louise, dated July 1:

"Eight days' steady tête-à-tête," she wrote, "is enough, quite enough.
Trust to the experience of an old countrywoman, who would be delighted
to kiss her little nephew and niece. Don't eat all your love in the
bud--keep a little for the future."