1829.] A Traveller's Recollections. 125 
saw them—spoke to them—conyinced them of the solidity of my pre- 
tensions—and as there are circumstances where justice will carry the day 
from intrigue, I gained my cause a second time. 
*T could not dissemble to myself the obligations I owed to the colonel ; 
he had powerfully seconded me, and his zeal had succeeded in destroying 
the reports raised by the relations of Monsieur de Villefort. Each day 
his visits became more frequent, his glances more expressive, his con- 
versations more animated. At last he hazarded a demand for his reward ; 
and, be it wisdom, or be it caprice, I found myself wedded a second 
time, without having had much more hand in it than the first. 
« At the expiration of a few months my husband was called to join 
his regiment; but, led on too far by his courage, he was killed at the 
battle of Nuremberg, and I became a widow for the second time, at 
the age of two-and-twenty. As his family were allied to the best 
families of the province, I naturally found myself connected with the 
most distinguished persons of Dauphiny ; and those connections con- 
tributed in no slight degree to correct whatever might have remained of 
the manners and habits of my childhood. 
«IT quitted Grenoble, after having arranged the affairs of my new inhe- 
ritance, of which the value doubled my income. I had now been four 
years at Paris, when one of the colonel’s sisters begged of me to make an 
application for her to a man of rank, who had promised to get the eldest 
of her sons on the establishment at St. Cyr. I drove to the Comte 
de N——— ; he received me d merveille—his countenance pleased me 
infinitely ; his conversation made me forget the hour ; he assured me he 
would interest himself in my request, and next morning he brought me 
the letter of admission. As the reward of this service, he asked per- 
mission to visit me, and had no difficulty to obtain it. Some days 
afterwards the comte demanded my hand—TI really think I would have 
offered it to him. 
As they drew up the contract, my names—which of course I was 
obliged to declare—drew from him an exclamation of joy and surprise 
that he was not sufficiently master of himself to restrain. This poor 
Comte de M———— loved me through reminiscence—never expecting 
to discover in the widow of Monsieur de Villefort, and General L § 
the pretty little flower girl of Neuilly—the object of his first passion. On 
my side, how could I have recognised in the man I now loved, him whom 
ten years earlier I should only have espoused, because-I could not help 
it. Each of us had made way in the world—every one made it at that 
period. The week following I married my lover ; the first month that 
succeeded was a month of fétes and pleasures ; the second. ” 
Here ended the manuscript. ; 
“ What will your young privy councillor say to that?” observed I to 
my friend, as I next day returned him the Countess’s memoir. 
« Why, that the chateau of the Prince de ——— is close to Neuilly 
that his highness is an amateur of beauty—that the. mother was called 
ta Belle Paysanne, and was—secretly married to him ?” 
