mother of orphans? The pupil was responsive to so much care. The
worthy priest died in 1812, a bishop, with the satisfaction of having
left in this world a child whose heart and mind were so well moulded
that he could outwit a man of forty. Who would have expected to have
found a heart of bronze, a brain of steel, beneath external traits as
seductive as ever the old painters, those naive artists, had given to
the serpent in the terrestrial paradise? Nor was that all. In
addition, the good-natured prelate had procured for the child of his
choice certain acquaintances in the best Parisian society, which might
equal in value, in the young man's hand, another hundred thousand
invested livres. In fine, this priest, vicious but politic, sceptical
yet learned, treacherous yet amiable, weak in appearance yet as
vigorous physically as intellectually, was so genuinely useful to his
pupil, so complacent to his vices, so fine a calculator of all kinds
of strength, so profound when it was needful to make some human
reckoning, so youthful at table, at Frascati, at--I know not where,
that the grateful Henri de Marsay was hardly moved at aught in 1814,
except when he looked at the portrait of his beloved bishop, the only
personal possession which the prelate had been able to bequeath him
(admirable type of the men whose genius will preserve the Catholic,
Apostolic, and Roman Church, compromised for the moment by the
feebleness of its recruits and the decrepit age of its pontiffs; but
if the church likes!).

The continental war prevented young De Marsay from knowing his real
father. It is doubtful whether he was aware of his name. A deserted
child, he was equally ignorant of Madame de Marsay. Naturally, he had
little regret for his putative father. As for Mademoiselle de Marsay,
his only mother, he built for her a handsome little monument in Pere
Lachaise when she died. Monseigneur de Maronis had guaranteed to this