A Start in Life | Page 8

he was made proconsul to two kingdoms in succession. In 1806, when
forty years of age, he married the sister of the ci-devant Marquis de
Ronquerolles, the widow at twenty of Gaubert, one of the most
illustrious of the Republican generals, who left her his whole property.
This marriage, a suitable one in point of rank, doubled the already
considerable fortune of the Comte de Serizy, who became through his
wife the brother-in-law of the ci-devant Marquis de Rouvre, made
count and chamberlain by the Emperor.
In 1814, weary with constant toil, the Comte de Serizy, whose shattered
health required rest, resigned all his posts, left the department at the
head of which the Emperor had placed him, and came to Paris, where
Napoleon was compelled by the evidence of his eyes to admit that the
count's illness was a valid excuse, though at first that unfatiguable
master, who gave no heed to the fatigue of others, was disposed to
consider Monsieur de Serizy's action as a defection. Though the senator
was never in disgrace, he was supposed to have reason to complain of

Napoleon. Consequently, when the Bourbons returned, Louis XVIII.,
whom Monsieur de Serizy held to be his legitimate sovereign, treated
the senator, now a peer of France, with the utmost confidence, placed
him in charge of his private affairs, and appointed him one of his
cabinet ministers. On the 20th of March, Monsieur de Serizy did not go
to Ghent. He informed Napoleon that he remained faithful to the house
of Bourbon; would not accept his peerage during the Hundred Days,
and passed that period on his estate at Serizy.
After the second fall of the Emperor, he became once more a
privy-councillor, was appointed vice-president of the Council of State,
and liquidator, on behalf of France, of claims and indemnities
demanded by foreign powers. Without personal assumption, without
ambition even, he possessed great influence in public affairs. Nothing
of importance was done without consulting him; but he never went to
court, and was seldom seen in his own salons. This noble life, devoting
itself from its very beginning to work, had ended by becoming a life of
incessant toil. The count rose at all seasons by four o'clock in the
morning, and worked till mid-day, attended to his functions as peer of
France and vice-president of the Council of State in the afternoons, and
went to bed at nine o'clock. In recognition of such labor, the King had
made him a knight of his various Orders. Monsieur de Serizy had long
worn the grand cross of the Legion of honor; he also had the orders of
the Golden Fleece, of Saint-Andrew of Russia, that of the Prussian
Eagle, and nearly all the lesser Orders of the courts of Europe. No man
was less obvious, or more useful in the political world than he. It is
easy to understand that the world's honor, the fuss and feathers of
public favor, the glories of success were indifferent to a man of this
stamp; but no one, unless a priest, ever comes to life of this kind
without some serious underlying reason. His conduct had its cause, and
a cruel one.
In love with his wife before he married her, this passion had lasted
through all the secret unhappiness of his marriage with a widow,--a
woman mistress of herself before as well as after her second marriage,
and who used her liberty all the more freely because her husband
treated her with the indulgence of a mother for a spoilt child. His

constant toil served him as shield and buckler against pangs of heart
which he silenced with the care that diplomatists give to the keeping of
secrets. He knew, moreover, how ridiculous was jealousy in the eyes of
a society that would never have believed in the conjugal passion of an
old statesman. How happened it that from the earliest days of his
marriage his wife so fascinated him? Why did he suffer without
resistance? How was it that he dared not resist? Why did he let the
years go by and still hope on? By what means did this young and pretty
and clever woman hold him in bondage?
The answer to all these questions would require a long history, which
would injure our present tale. Let us only remark here that the constant
toil and grief of the count had unfortunately contributed not a little to
deprive him of personal advantages very necessary to a man who
attempts to struggle against dangerous comparisons. In fact, the most
cruel of the count's secret sorrows was that of causing repugnance to
his wife by a malady of the skin resulting solely from excessive labor.
Kind, and always considerate of the countess, he allowed her to be
mistress of herself and