Clotilde-Frederique, the second daughter, desired to remain unmarried,
in memory of a man she had deeply loved, Lucien de Rubempre, while, at
the same time, she did not wish to become a nun like her eldest
sister; two of the remaining sisters were already married, and the
youngest but one, the pretty Sabine, just twenty years old, was the
only disposable daughter left. It was Sabine on whom Felicite resolved
to lay the burden of curing Calyste's passion for Beatrix.

During the journey to Paris Mademoiselle des Touches revealed to the
baroness these arrangements. The new house in the rue de Bourbon was
being decorated, and she intended it for the home of Sabine and
Calyste if her plans succeeded.

The party had been invited to stay at the hotel de Grandlieu, where
the baroness was received with all the distinction due to her rank as
the wife of a du Guenic and the daughter of a British peer.
Mademoiselle des Touches urged Calyste to see Paris, while she herself
made the necessary inquiries about Beatrix (who had disappeared from
the world, and was travelling abroad), and she took care to throw him
into the midst of diversions and amusements of all kinds. The season
for balls and fetes was just beginning, and the duchess and her
daughters did the honors of Paris to the young Breton, who was
insensibly diverted from his own thoughts by the movement and life of
the great city. He found some resemblance of mind between Madame de
Rochefide and Sabine de Grandlieu, who was certainly one of the
handsomest and most charming girls in Parisian society, and this
fancied likeness made him give to her coquetries a willing attention
which no other woman could possibly have obtained from him. Sabine
herself was greatly pleased with Calyste, and matters went so well
that during the winter of 1837 the young Baron du Guenic, whose youth