which I alone discovered, were low-lived, and not only destroyed his
health but ruined his future.

After twelve years of great misery he made his way to France, under
the decree of the Emperor which permitted the return of the emigrants.
As the wretched wayfarer crossed the Rhine and saw the tower of
Strasburg against the evening sky, his strength gave way. "'France!
France!' I cried. 'I see France!'" (he said to me) "as a child cries
'Mother!' when it is hurt." Born to wealth, he was now poor; made to
command a regiment or govern a province, he was now without authority
and without a future; constitutionally healthy and robust, he returned
infirm and utterly worn out. Without enough education to take part
among men and affairs, now broadened and enlarged by the march of
events, necessarily without influence of any kind, he lived despoiled
of everything, of his moral strength as well as his physical. Want of
money made his name a burden. His unalterable opinions, his
antecedents with the army of Conde, his trials, his recollections, his
wasted health, gave him susceptibilities which are but little spared
in France, that land of jest and sarcasm. Half dead he reached Maine,
where, by some accident of the civil war, the revolutionary government
had forgotten to sell one of his farms of considerable extent, which
his farmer had held for him by giving out that he himself was the
owner of it.

When the Lenoncourt family, living at Givry, an estate not far from
this farm, heard of the arrival of the Comte de Mortsauf, the Duc de
Lenoncourt invited him to stay at Givry while a house was being
prepared for him. The Lenoncourt family were nobly generous to him,
and with them he remained some months, struggling to hide his
sufferings during that first period of rest. The Lenoncourts had