of despotism which was, in truth, the one little sin of her nature.
But the sister had sacrificed everything to the brother; she had
staked her all upon his heart; she lived by him only. Brigitte's
ascendancy over Jerome was singularly proved by the marriage which she
procured for him about the year 1814.

Seeing the tendency to enforced reduction which the new-comers to
power under the Restoration were beginning to bring about in the
government offices, and particularly since the return of the old
society which sought to ride over the bourgeoisie, Brigitte
understood, far better than her brother could explain it to her, the
social crisis which presently extinguished their common hopes. No more
successes for that handsome Thuillier in the salons of the nobles who
now succeeded the plebeians of the Empire!

Thuillier was not enough of a person to take up a politic opinion and
choose a party; he felt, as his sister did for him, the necessity of
profiting by the remains of his youth to make a settlement. In such a
situation, a sister as jealous of her power as Brigitte naturally
would, and ought, to marry her brother, to suit herself as well as to
suit him; for she alone could make him really happy, Madame Thuillier
being only an indispensable accessory to the obtaining of two or three
children. If Brigitte did not have an intellect quite the equal of her
will, at least she had the instinct of her despotism; without, it is
true, education, she marched straight before her, with the headstrong
determination of a nature accustomed to succeed. She had the genius of
housekeeping, a faculty for economy, a thorough understanding of how
to live, and a love for work. She saw plainly that she could never
succeed in marrying Jerome into a sphere above their own, where
parents might inquire into their domestic life and feel uneasy at