merchant's daughter, my mother, an old lady who had once been her
governess, and had always lived with her since her marriage, the new
Lord, the Abbe, my father, and my uncle. When dinner was announced,
the peer advanced in new-blown dignity, to offer his arm as a matter
of course to my mother. My father's pale face flushed crimson in a
moment. He touched the magnificent merchant-lord on the arm, and
pointed significantly, with a low bow, towards the decrepit old lady
who had once been my mother's governess. Then walking to the other end
of the room, where the penniless Abbe was looking over a book in a
corner, he gravely and courteously led the little, deformed, limping
language-master, clad in a long, threadbare, black coat, up to my
mother (whose shoulder the Abbe's head hardly reached), held the door
open for them to pass out first, with his own hand; politely invited
the new nobleman, who stood half-paralysed between confusion and
astonishment, to follow with the tottering old lady on his arm; and
then returned to lead the peer's daughter down to dinner himself. He
only resumed his wonted expression and manner, when he had seen the
little Abbe--the squalid, half-starved representative of mighty barons
of the olden time--seated at the highest place of the table by my
mother's side.

It was by such accidental circumstances as these that you discovered
how far he was proud. He never boasted of his ancestors; he never even
spoke of them, except when he was questioned on the subject; but he
never forgot them. They were the very breath of his life; the deities
of his social worship: the family treasures to be held precious beyond
all lands and all wealth, all ambitions and all glories, by his
children and his children's children to the end of their race.

In home-life he performed his duties towards his family honourably,