This phrase was amusing when it proceeded from her lips. What!--
"struggle for life" with those little delicate, soft, childlike hands?
How absurd! She laughed at the idea now, and all those who heard her
laughed with her; Marien laughed more than any one. He, who had
befriended her in her days of adversity, seemed to retain for the
Baroness in her prosperity the same respectful and discreet devotion he
had shown her as Mademoiselle Hecker. He had sent a wonderful portrait
of her, as the wife of M. de Nailles, to the Salon--a portrait that the
richer electors of Grandchaux, who had voted for her husband and who
could afford to travel, gazed at with satisfaction, congratulating
themselves that they had a deputy who had married so pretty a woman.
It even seemed as if the beauty of Madame de Nailles belonged in some
sort to the arrondissement, so proud were those who lived there of having
their share in her charms.

Another portrait--that of M. de Nailles himself--was sent down to
Limouzin from Paris, and all the peasants in the country round were
invited to come and look at it. That also produced a very favorable
impression on the rustic public, and added to the popularity of their
deputy. Never had the proprietor of Grandchaux looked so grave, so
dignified, so majestic, so absorbed in deep reflection, as he looked
standing beside a table covered with papers--papers, no doubt, all having
relation to local interests, important to the public and to individuals.
It was the very figure of a statesman destined to high dignities. No one
who gazed on such a deputy could doubt that one day he would be in the
ministry.

It was by such real services that Marien endeavored to repay the
friendship and the kindness always awaiting him in the small house in the