ever, does rank and nobility need fortune. Calyste, accept a part
of mine, and make a worthy use of it. It is not a gift; it is a
trust I place in your hands. I have thought more of your children
and of your old Breton house than of you in offering you the
profits which time has brought to my property in Paris.

"Let us now sign the contract," said the young baron, returning to the
assembled company.

The Abbe Grimont, to whom the honor of the conversion of this
celebrated woman was attributed, became, soon after, vicar-general of
the diocese.

The following week, after the marriage ceremony, which, according to
the custom of many families of the faubourg Saint-Germain, was
celebrated at seven in the morning at the church of Saint Thomas
d'Aquin, Calyste and Sabine got into their pretty travelling-carriage,
amid the tears, embraces, and congratulations of a score of friends,
collected under the awning of the hotel de Grandlieu. The
congratulations came from the four witnesses, and the men present; the
tears were in the eyes of the Duchesse de Grandlieu and her daughter
Clotilde, who both trembled under the weight of the same thought,--

"She is launched upon the sea of life! Poor Sabine! at the mercy of a
man who does not marry entirely of his own free will."

Marriage is not wholly made up of pleasures,--as fugitive in that
relation as in all others; it involves compatibility of temper,
physical sympathies, harmonies of character, which make of that social
necessity an eternal problem. Marriageable daughters, as well as