The Golden Lion of Granpere | Page 4

So there had come to be a few words, and George Voss had gone
away to the house of a cousin of his mother's, and had taken to
commanding there.
Not that there had been any quarrel between the father and the son; nor
indeed that George was aware that he had been in the least disobedient
to his parent. There was no recognised ambition for rule in the breasts
of either of them. It was simply this, that their tempers were alike; and
when on an occasion Michel told his son that he would not allow a
certain piece of folly which the son was, as he thought, likely to
commit, George declared that he would soon set that matter right by
leaving Granpere. Accordingly he did leave Granpere, and became the
right hand, and indeed the head, and backbone, and best leg of his old
cousin Madame Faragon of the Poste at Colmar. Now the matter on
which these few words occurred was a question of love--whether
George Voss should fall in love with and marry his step-mother's niece
Marie Bromar. But before anything farther can be said of these few

words, Madame Voss and her niece must be introduced to the reader.
Madame Voss was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, and
had now been a wife some five or six years. She had been brought from
Epinal, where she had lived with a married sister, a widow, much older
than herself--in parting from whom on her marriage there had been
much tribulation. 'Should anything happen to Marie,' she had said to
Michel Voss, before she gave him her troth, 'you will let Minnie
Bromar come to me?' Michel Voss, who was then hotly in love with his
hoped-for bride--hotly in love in spite of his four- and-forty years--gave
the required promise. The said 'something' which had been suspected
had happened. Madame Bromar had died, and Minnie Bromar her
daughter--or Marie as she was always afterwards called--had at once
been taken into the house at Granpere. Michel never thought twice
about it when he was reminded of his promise. 'If I hadn't promised at
all, she should come the same,' he said. 'The house is big enough for a
dozen more yet.' In saying this he perhaps alluded to a little baby that
then lay in a cradle in his wife's room, by means of which at that time
Madame Voss was able to make her big husband do pretty nearly
anything that she pleased. So Marie Bromar, then just fifteen years of
age, was brought over from Epinal to Granpere, and the house certainly
was not felt to be too small because she was there. Marie soon learned
the ways and wishes of her burly, soft-hearted uncle; would fill his pipe
for him, and hand him his soup, and bring his slippers, and put her soft
arm round his neck, and became a favourite. She was only a child when
she came, and Michel thought it was very pleasant; but in five years'
time she was a woman, and Michel was forced to reflect that it would
not be well that there should be another marriage and another family in
the house while he was so young himself,--there was at this time a third
baby in the cradle,--and then Marie Bromar had not a franc of dot.
Marie was the sweetest eldest daughter in the world, but he could not
think it right that his son should marry a wife before he had done a
stroke for himself in the world. Prudence made it absolutely necessary
that he should say a word to his son.
Madame Voss was certainly nearly twenty years younger than her
husband, and yet the pair did not look to be ill-sorted. Michel was so

handsome, strong, and hale; and Madame Voss, though she was a
comely woman,--though when she was brought home a bride to
Granpere the neighbours had all declared that she was very
handsome,--carried with her a look of more years than she really
possessed. She had borne many of a woman's cares, and had known
much of woman's sorrows before she had become wife to Michel Voss;
and then when the babes came, and she had settled down as mistress of
that large household, and taught herself to regard George Voss and
Marie Bromar almost as her own children, all idea that she was much
younger than her husband departed from her. She was a woman who
desired to excel her husband in nothing,--if only she might be
considered to be in some things his equal. There was no feeling in the
village that Michel Voss had brought home a young wife and had made
a fool of himself. He was a man entitled to have a wife much