The Celibates | Page 8

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 francs, of which one
thousand five hundred went for costs. The remaining eight thousand
came to Madame Lorain, who lived upon the income of them in a sort
of almshouse at Nantes, like that of Sainte- Perine in Paris, called
Saint-Jacques, where the two old people had bed and board for a
humble payment.
As it was impossible to keep Pierrette, their ruined little granddaughter,
with them, the old Lorrains bethought themselves of her uncle and aunt
Rogron, in Provins, to whom they wrote. These Rogrons were dead.
The letter might, therefore, have easily been lost; but if anything here
below can take the place of Providence, it is the post. Postal spirit,
incomparably above public spirit, exceeds in brilliancy of resource and
invention the ablest romance-writers. When the post gets hold of a

letter, worth, to it, from three to ten sous, and does not immediately
know where to find the person to whom that letter is addressed, it
displays a financial anxiety only to be met with in very pertinacious
creditors. The post goes and comes and ferrets through all the
eighty-six departments. Difficulties only arouse the genius of the clerks,
who may really be called men-of-letters, and who set about to search
for that unknown human being with as much ardor as the
mathematicians of the Bureau give to longitudes. They literally ransack
the whole kingdom. At the first ray of hope all the post- offices in Paris
are alert. Sometimes the receiver of a missing letter is amazed at the
network of scrawled directions which covers both back and front of the
missive,--glorious vouchers for the administrative persistency with
which the post has been at work. If a man undertook what the post
accomplishes, he would