Charlottes Inheritance | Page 4

treated something after the manner of school-boys--were out of doors.
For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian life--not
altogether idle, but not altogether industrious--amusing himself a great
deal, and learning very little; moderate in his expenditure, when
compared with his fellow-students, but no small drain upon the funds
of the little family at home. In sooth, this good old Norman family had
in a pecuniary sense sunk very low. There was real poverty in the
tumble-down house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a
cheerful face, and took things pleasantly. A very humble English
farmer would have despised the income which supported M. Lenoble's
household; and it was only the economy and skill of the matron and her
daughter which sustained the dignity of the small establishment.
There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple-minded
old father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and that was the hope in
the grand things to be done, in the dim future, by Gustave, the son, the
heir, the pole-star of the household.
Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad light of honour and
riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student.
On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to
be sustained. To him they looked, of him they thought, in the long
dreary winter evenings during which the mother nodded over her
knitting, the father slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at
her needle-work by her little table of palissandre.
He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of study,
bringing with him life and light and gladness, as it seemed to the two
women who adored him; and now, in the winter of 1828, they expected
another visit. He was to be with them on the first day of the new year.

He was to stay with them till his Mother's fete--the 17th of January.
The father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety. The
mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she who loved
her brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could be more anxious
than usual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, a dire conspiracy, of
which Gustave was to be the subject and victim, had been concocted
beneath that innocent-seeming roof. Father, mother, and sister, seated
round the family hearth, fatal as some domestic Parcae, had hatched
their horrid scheme, while the helpless lad amused himself yonder in
the great city, happily unconscious of the web that was being woven to
enmesh him.
The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame held, the
needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were employed in the
fabrication of a matrimonial net. These unsophisticated conspirators
were bent upon bringing about the marriage of their victim, a marriage
which should at once elevate and enrich the Lenobles of Beaubocage,
in the person of Gustave.
Francois Lenoble's best friend and nearest neighbour was a certain
Baron Frehlter, of Germanic origin, but for some generations past
naturalised to the Gallic soil. The Baron was proprietor of an estate
which could show ten acres for one of the lands of Beaubocage. The
Baron boasted a family tree which derived its root from a ramification
of the Hohenzollern pedigree; but, less proud and more prudent than
the Lenobles, the Frehlters had not scorned to intermingle their
Prussian blue blood with less pure streams of commercial France. The
épicier element had prevailed in the fair brides of the house of Frehlter
for the last three or four generations, and the house of Frehlter had
considerably enriched itself by this sacrifice of its family pride.
The present Baron had married a lady ten years his senior, the widow
of a Rouen merchant, alike wealthy and pious, but famous rather for
these attributes than for any personal charm. One only child, a girl, had
blessed this union. She was now a young person of something under
twenty years of age, newly emerged from her convent, and pining for
some share in the gaieties and delights of a worldly paradise, which had

already been open to many of her schoolfellows.
Mademoiselle Frehlter's companions had, for the most part, left school
to be married. She had heard of the corbeille, the wedding dress, the
wedding festivities, and occasionally a word or two about that
secondary consideration the bridegroom. The young lady was therefore
somewhat inclined to take it ill of her father that he had not secured for
her the éclat of an early marriage. Her departure from the convent of
the Sacré Coeur, at Vevinord, was flat and tame to an extreme degree.
The future lay before her, a dreary desert of home life, to be spent with
a father who gorged