Colonel d'Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d'Aiglemont, the bearer of
the Emperor's orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking
his wife as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his
own, far away from the dangers threatening Paris.

Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over
the bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old
mansion of the _ci-devant_ Marquise de Listomere-Landon.

The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear
the paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct
mode. They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the
heyday of love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits of
the age of Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of _poudre a la
marechale_ always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and
less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well and
talk still better, their laughter comes more readily for an old memory
than for a new jest--the present intrudes upon them.

When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomere-Landon
(to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain,
the old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the _Galerie
de l'ancienne Cour_ (her favorite work), and recovered something like
youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
young couple there.

Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.