From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in
charge of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore
the appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in
the district.

A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at
the end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to
see the carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come
from Paris with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample
opportunity of observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the
horses holding a little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her
knee. The child's mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like a
dying woman sent out into the country air by her doctors as a last
resource. Village politicians were by no means pleased to see the
young, delicate, downcast face; they had hoped that the new arrival at
Saint-Lange would bring some life and stir into the neighborhood, and
clearly any sort of stir or movement must be distasteful to the
suffering invalid in the traveling carriage.

That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared
that such depression could admit of but one construction--the Marquise
was ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
d'Angouleme (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her
ladyship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck
on the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the
face of the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in
little lots. There would be some good strokes of business to be made