though it was, with the unalterable serenity of a pure conscience.

The baron was still young; he was not yet fifty, but anxiety, work, and
long nights passed in struggling with the most arduous difficulties of
the imperial policy, had made him old before his time.

He was tall, slightly inclined to _embonpoint_, and stooped a little.

His calm eyes, his serious mouth, his broad, furrowed forehead, and his
austere manners inspired respect.

"He must be stern and inflexible," said those who saw him for the first
time.

But they were mistaken.

If, in the exercise of his official duties, this truly great man had the
strength to resist all temptations to swerve from the path of right; if,
when duty was at stake, he was as rigid as iron, in private life he
was as unassuming as a child, and kind and gentle even to the verge of
weakness.

To this nobility of character he owed his domestic happiness, that rare
and precious happiness which fills one's existence with a celestial
perfume.

During the bloodiest epoch of the Reign of Terror, M. d'Escorval had
wrested from the guillotine a young girl named Victoire-Laure d'Alleu, a
distant cousin of the Rhetaus of Commarin, as beautiful as an angel, and
only three years younger than himself.