Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/32

8 uncles to me, and, with the best intentions in the world, did me all the harm they could, but as their intentions were good, I suppose they will not have to answer to God for their misdeeds. The one was the President de Salaberry, and the other Baron d'A, who, having become a widower, took for his second wife Madame P, a widow with a grown-up daughter. Madame P, now my aunt, married her daughter to my elder brother, and I suppose I interfered with her projects and calculations, but at any rate she certainly was not kindly disposed towards me, and by dint of curtain lectures at last persuaded her easy-going, credulous husband, my uncle, to share in her dislike of me. My brother, and my young sister-in-law, had something to do with the schemes of my aunt (her mother, and his mother-in-law), for I have some idea,—in fact I am almost certain,—that her cordial dislike to me was the effect of her maternal tenderness. I was only a "cadet of Auvergne," and my brother was the elder, and by the simple application of one of the four rules