food as his two servants, a Provencal lad and the old woman who used
to wait on his wife. The rooms are scantily furnished.

Nevertheless, the house of l'Estorade had done its best; the cupboards
had been ransacked, and its last man beaten up for the dinner, which
was served to us on old silver dishes, blackened and battered. The
exile, my darling pet, is like the railing, emaciated! He is pale and
silent, and bears traces of suffering. At thirty-seven he might be
fifty. The once beautiful ebon locks of youth are streaked with white
like a lark's wing. His fine blue eyes are cavernous; he is a little
deaf, which suggests the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.

Spite of all this, I have graciously consented to become Mme. de
l'Estorade and to receive a dowry of two hundred and fifty thousand
livres, but only on the express condition of being allowed to work my
will upon the grange and make a park there. I have demanded from my
father, in set terms, a grant of water, which can be brought thither
from Maucombe. In a month I shall be Mme. de l'Estorade; for, dear, I
have made a good impression. After the snows of Siberia a man is ready
enough to see merit in those black eyes, which according to you, used
to ripen fruit with a look. Louis de l'Estorade seems well content to
marry the _fair Renee de Maucombe_--such is your friend's splendid
title.

Whilst you are preparing to reap the joys of that many-sided existence
which awaits a young lady of the Chaulieu family, and to queen it in
Paris, your poor little sweetheart, Renee, that child of the desert,
has fallen from the empyrean, whither together we had soared, into the
vulgar realities of a life as homely as a daisy's. I have vowed to
myself to comfort this young man, who has never known youth, but