upon which the Republic, the Directory, the Consulate and the Empire
seemed to have set their impress.

He became so deeply in love with his wife, that he asked and obtained
from the Emperor a post at Paris, in order that he might be enabled to
watch over his treasure. He was as jealous as Count Almaviva, still
more from vanity than from love. The young orphan had married her
husband from necessity, and, flattered by the ascendancy she wielded
over a man much older than herself, waited upon his wishes and his
needs; but her delicacy was offended from the first days of their
marriage by the habits and ideas of a man whose manners were tinged
with republican license. He was a predestined.

I do not know exactly how long the baron made his honeymoon last, nor
when war was declared in his household; but I believe it happened in
1816, at a very brilliant ball given by Monsieur D-----, a
commissariat officer, that the commissary general, who had been
promoted head of the department, admired the beautiful Madame B-----,
the wife of a banker, and looked at her much more amorously than a
married man should have allowed himself to do.

At two o'clock in the morning it happened that the banker, tired of
waiting any longer, went home leaving his wife at the ball.

"We are going to take you home to your house," said the baroness to
Madame B-----. "Monsieur de V-----, offer your arm to Emilie!"

And now the baron is seated in his carriage next to a woman who,
during the whole evening, had been offered and had refused a thousand
attentions, and from whom he had hoped in vain to win a single look.