Pierrette | Page 7

and truces, old Auffray himself
(formerly a grocer) died, at the age of eighty-eight, without having
found time to make a will. His property was administered by his
daughter, Madame Rogron, and her husband so completely in their own
interests that nothing remained for the old man's widow beyond the
house she lived in on the little square, and a few acres of land. This
widow, the mother of Madame Lorrain, was only thirty-eight at the
time of her husband's death. Like many widows, she came to the
unwise decision of remarrying. She sold the house and land to her step-
daughter, Madame Rogron, and married a young physician named
Neraud, who wasted her whole fortune. She died of grief and misery
two years later.
Thus the share of her father's property which ought to have come to
Madame Lorrain disappeared almost entirely, being reduced to the
small sum of eight thousand francs. Major Lorrain was killed at the
battle of Montereau, leaving his wife, then twenty-one years of age,
with a little daughter of fourteen months, and no other means than the
pension to which she was entitled and an eventual inheritance from her
late husband's parents, Monsieur and Madame Lorrain, retail
shopkeepers at Pen-Hoel, a village in the Vendee, situated in that part
of it which is called the Marais. These Lorrains, grandfather and
grandmother of Pierrette Lorrain, sold wood for building purposes,
slates, tiles, pantiles, pipes, etc. Their business, either from their own
incapacity or through ill-luck, did badly, and gave them scarcely
enough to live on. The failure of the well-known firm of Collinet at
Nantes, caused by the events of 1814 which led to a sudden fall in
colonial products, deprived them of twenty-four thousand francs which
they had just deposited with that house.
The arrival of their daughter-in-law was therefore welcome to them.

Her pension of eight hundred francs was a handsome income at
Pen-Hoel. The eight thousand francs which the widow's half-brother
and sister Rogron sent to her from her father's estate (after a multitude
of legal formalities) were placed by her in the Lorrains' business, they
giving her a mortgage on a little house which they owned at Nantes, let
for three hundred francs, and barely worth ten thousand.
Madame Lorrain the younger, Pierrette's mother, died in 1819. The
child of old Auffray and his young wife was small, delicate, and
weakly; the damp climate of the Marais did not agree with her. But her
husband's family persuaded her, in order to keep her with them, that in
no other quarter of the world could she find a more healthy region. She
was so petted and tenderly cared for that her death, when it came,
brought nothing but honor to the old Lorrains.
Some persons declared that Brigaut, an old Vendeen, one of those men
of iron who served under Charette, under Mercier, under the Marquis
de Montauran, and the Baron du Guenic, in the wars against the
Republic, counted for a good deal in the willingness of the younger
Madame Lorrain to remain in the Marais. If it were so, his soul must
have been a truly loving and devoted one. All Pen-Hoel saw him--he
was called respectfully Major Brigaut, the grade he had held in the
Catholic army--spending his days and his evenings in the Lorrains'
parlor, beside the window of the imperial major. Toward the last, the
curate of Pen-Hoel made certain representations to old Madame Lorrain,
begging her to persuade her daughter-in-law to marry Brigaut, and
promising to have the major appointed justice of peace for the canton
of Pen-Hoel, through the influence of the Vicomte de Kergarouet. The
death of the poor young woman put an end to the matter.
Pierrette was left in charge of her grandparents who owed her four
hundred francs a year, interest on the little property placed in their
hands. This small sum was now applied to her maintenance. The old
people, who were growing less and less fit for business, soon found
themselves confronted by an active and capable competitor, against
whom they said hard things, all the while doing nothing to defeat him.
Major Brigaut, their friend and adviser, died six months after his friend,
the younger Madame Lorrain,--perhaps of grief, perhaps of his wounds,
of which he had received twenty-seven.
Like a sound merchant, the competitor set about ruining his adversaries

in order to get rid of all rivalry. With his connivance, the Lorrains
borrowed money on notes, which they were unable to meet, and which
drove them in their old days into bankruptcy. Pierrette's claim upon the
house in Nantes was superseded by the legal rights of her grandmother,
who enforced them to secure the daily bread of her poor husband. The
house was sold for nine thousand five hundred