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The Thirteen by Honoré de Balzac
page 24 of 468 (05%)
dowager, too obstinate to emigrate, was left; she was put in prison,
threatened with death, but was saved by the 9th Thermidor and
recovered her property. When the proper time came, about the year
1804, she recalled her grandson to France. Auguste de Maulincour, the
only scion of the Carbonnon de Maulincour, was brought up by the good
dowager with the triple care of a mother, a woman of rank, and an
obstinate dowager. When the Restoration came, the young man, then
eighteen years of age, entered the Maison-Rouge, followed the princes
to Ghent, was made an officer in the body-guard, left it to serve in
the line, but was recalled later to the Royal Guard, where, at
twenty-three years of age, he found himself major of a cavalry regiment,
--a splendid position, due to his grandmother, who had played her cards
well to obtain it, in spite of his youth. This double biography is a
compendium of the general and special history, barring variations, of
all the noble families who emigrated having debts and property,
dowagers and tact.

Madame la Baronne de Maulincour had a friend in the old Vidame de
Pamiers, formerly a commander of the Knights of Malta. This was one of
those undying friendships founded on sexagenary ties which nothing can
weaken, because at the bottom of such intimacies there are certain
secrets of the human heart, delightful to guess at when we have the
time, insipid to explain in twenty words, and which might make the
text of a work in four volumes as amusing as the Doyen de Killerine,
--a work about which young men talk and judge without having read it.

Auguste de Maulincour belonged therefore to the faubourg Saint-Germain
through his grandmother and the vidame, and it sufficed him to date
back two centuries to take the tone and opinions of those who assume
to go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, slender, and delicate in
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