house, and to sigh, in common with so many others, for le bon vieux
temps. At the Restoration, there was some difficulty in establishing the
right of the de la Rocheaimards to their share of the indemnity; a
difficulty I never heard explained, but which was probably owing to the
circumstance that there was no one in particular to interest themselves in
the matter, but an old woman of sixty-five and a little girl of four. Such
appellants, unsupported by money, interest, or power, seldom make out
a very strong case for reparation of any sort, in this righteous world of
ours, and had it not been for the goodness of the dauphine it is probable
that the vicomtesse and her grand-daughter would have been reduced
to downright beggary. But the daughter of the late King got intelligence
of the necessities of the two descendants of Crusaders, and a pension
of two thousand francs a year was granted, en attendant.

{Rocheaimard = both the Chateau and the family are fictitious; marechal
du camp = general commanding a brigade; le bon vieux temps = the
good old days; late King = Louis XVI, guillotined in 1793; en attendant
= for the time being}

Four hundred dollars a year does not appear a large sum, even to the
nouveaux riches of America, but it sufficed to give Adrienne and her
grandmother a comfortable, and even a respectable subsistence in the
provinces. It was impossible for them to inhabit the chateau, now
converted into a workshop and filled with machinery, but lodgings were
procured in its immediate vicinity. Here Madame de la Rocheaimard
whiled away the close of a varied and troubled life; if not in absolute
peace, still not in absolute misery, while her grand-daughter grew into
young womanhood, a miracle of goodness and pious devotion to her
sole surviving parent. The strength of the family tie in France, and its
comparative weakness in America, has been the subject of frequent