old lady one of the best places in the skies, so that when he saw her
die happy, Henri gave her some egotistical tears; he began to weep on
his own account. Observing this grief, the abbe dried his pupil's
tears, bidding him observe that the good woman took her snuff most
offensively, and was becoming so ugly and deaf and tedious that he
ought to return thanks for her death. The bishop had emancipated his
pupil in 1811. Then, when the mother of M. de Marsay remarried, the
priest chose, in a family council, one of those honest dullards,
picked out by him through the windows of his confessional, and charged
him with the administration of the fortune, the revenues of which he
was willing to apply to the needs of the community, but of which he
wished to preserve the capital.

Towards the end of 1814, then, Henri de Marsay had no sentiment of
obligation in the world, and was as free as an unmated bird. Although
he had lived twenty-two years he appeared to be barely seventeen. As a
rule the most fastidious of his rivals considered him to be the
prettiest youth in Paris. From his father, Lord Dudley, he had derived
a pair of the most amorously deceiving blue eyes; from his mother the
bushiest of black hair, from both pure blood, the skin of a young
girl, a gentle and modest expression, a refined and aristocratic
figure, and beautiful hands. For a woman, to see him was to lose her
head for him; do you understand? to conceive one of those desires
which eat the heart, which are forgotten because of the impossibility
of satisfying them, because women in Paris are commonly without
tenacity. Few of them say to themselves, after the fashion of men, the
"_Je Maintiendrai_," of the House of Orange.

Underneath this fresh young life, and in spite of the limpid springs
in his eyes, Henri had a lion's courage, a monkey's agility. He could