monarchy could have been saved by their retirement and the accession
of this Young France, which the old doctrinaires, the _emigres_ of the
Restoration, still speak of slightingly. Auguste de Maulincour was a
victim to the ideas which weighed in those days upon French youth, and
we must here explain why.

The Vidame de Pamiers was still, at sixty-seven years of age, a very
brilliant man, having seen much and lived much; a good talker, a man
of honor and a gallant man, but who held as to women the most
detestable opinions; he loved them, and he despised them. _Their_
honor! _their_ feelings! Ta-ra-ra, rubbish and shams! When he was with
them, he believed in them, the ci-devant "monstre"; he never
contradicted them, and he made them shine. But among his male friends,
when the topic of the sex came up, he laid down the principle that to
deceive women, and to carry on several intrigues at once, should be
the occupation of those young men who were so misguided as to wish to
meddle in the affairs of the State. It is sad to have to sketch so
hackneyed a portrait, for has it not figured everywhere and become,
literally, as threadbare as that of a grenadier of the Empire? But the
vidame had an influence on Monsieur de Maulincour's destiny which
obliges us to preserve his portrait; he lectured the young man after
his fashion, and did his best to convert him to the doctrines of the
great age of gallantry.

The dowager, a tender-hearted, pious woman, sitting between God and
her vidame, a model of grace and sweetness, but gifted with that
well-bred persistency which triumphs in the long run, had longed to
preserve for her grandson the beautiful illusions of life, and had
therefore brought him up in the highest principles; she instilled into
him her own delicacy of feeling and made him, to outward appearance, a