The Muse of the Department | Page 5

bases her assumption
of superiority on feelings scorned; she is a blue- stocking of sentiment;
and she is rather less of a bore, love to some extent neutralizing
literature. The most conspicuous result of George Sand's celebrity was
to elicit the fact that France has a perfectly enormous number of
superior women, who have, however, till now been so generous as to
leave the field to the Marechal de Saxe's granddaughter.
The Superior Woman of Sancerre lived at La Baudraye, a town-house
and country-house in one, within ten minutes of the town, and in the
village, or, if you will, the suburb of Saint-Satur. The La Baudrayes of
the present day have, as is frequently the case, thrust themselves in, and
are but a substitute for those La Baudrayes whose name, glorious in the
Crusades, figured in the chief events of the history of Le Berry.
The story must be told.
In the time of Louis XIV. a certain sheriff named Milaud, whose

forefathers had been furious Calvinists, was converted at the time of the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. To encourage this movement in one
of the strong-holds of Calvinism, the King gave said Milaud a good
appointment in the "Waters and Forests," granted him arms and the title
of Sire (or Lord) de la Baudraye, with the fief of the old and genuine La
Baudrayes. The descendants of the famous Captain la Baudraye fell,
sad to say, into one of the snares laid for heretics by the new decrees,
and were hanged--an unworthy deed of the great King's.
Under Louis XV. Milaud de la Baudraye, from being a mere squire,
was made Chevalier, and had influence enough to obtain for his son a
cornet's commission in the Musketeers. This officer perished at
Fontenoy, leaving a child, to whom King Louis XVI. subsequently
granted the privileges, by patent, of a farmer-general, in remembrance
of his father's death on the field of battle.
This financier, a fashionable wit, great at charades, capping verses, and
posies to Chlora, lived in society, was a hanger-on to the Duc de
Nivernais, and fancied himself obliged to follow the nobility into exile;
but he took care to carry his money with him. Thus the rich /emigre/
was able to assist more than one family of high rank.
In 1800, tired of hoping, and perhaps tired of lending, he returned to
Sancerre, bought back La Baudraye out of a feeling of vanity and
imaginary pride, quite intelligible in a sheriff's grandson, though under
the consulate his prospects were but slender; all the more so, indeed,
because the ex-farmer-general had small hopes of his heir's
perpetuating the new race of La Baudraye.
Jean Athanase Polydore Milaud de la Baudraye, his only son, more
than delicate from his birth, was very evidently the child of a man
whose constitution had early been exhausted by the excesses in which
rich men indulge, who then marry at the first stage of premature old age,
and thus bring degeneracy into the highest circles of society. During the
years of the emigration Madame de la Baudraye, a girl of no fortune,
chosen for her noble birth, had patiently reared this sallow, sickly boy,
for whom she had the devoted love mothers feel for such changeling
creatures. Her death--she was a Casteran de la Tour-- contributed to
bring about Monsieur de la Baudraye's return to France.
This Lucullus of the Milauds, when he died, left his son the fief,
stripped indeed of its fines and dues, but graced with weathercocks

bearing his coat-of-arms, a thousand louis-d'or--in 1802 a considerable
sum of money--and certain receipts for claims on very distinguished
/emigres/ enclosed in a pocketbook full of verses, with this inscription
on the wrapper, /Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas/.
Young La Baudraye did not die, but he owed his life to habits of
monastic strictness; to the economy of action which Fontenelle
preached as the religion of the invalid; and, above all, to the air of
Sancerre and the influence of its fine elevation, whence a panorama
over the valley of the Loire may be seen extending for forty leagues.
From 1802 to 1815 young La Baudraye added several plots to his
vineyards, and devoted himself to the culture of the vine. The
Restoration seemed to him at first so insecure that he dared not go to
Paris to claim his debts; but after Napoleon's death he tried to turn his
father's collection of autographs into money, though not understanding
the deep philosophy which had thus mixed up I O U's and copies of
verses. But the winegrower lost so much time in impressing his identity
on the Duke of Navarreins "and others," as he phrased it, that he came
back to Sancerre, to his beloved vintage, without having obtained
anything but offers of