Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/383

 months of the year in Paris, where they have bought a magnificent mansion in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. After giving her house in Nemours to the Sisters of Mercy to keep a free school, the dowager Madame de Portenduère went to live at Le Rouvre, where La Bougival is head concierge. Cabirolle’s father, the old conductor of La Dueler, a man of sixty, has married La Bougival, who possesses twelve hundred francs a year, besides the ample salary from her situation. Cabirolle’s son is Monsieur de Portenduère’s coachman.

If you should see passing through the Champs-Elysees one of those charming little low carriages called escargots, lined with silk gridelin, ornamented with blue trimmings, and should admire a pretty, fair woman therein, her face wreathed in myriads of curls, with eyes like shining periwinkles and brimful of love, leaning lightly against a handsome young man; if you should be bitten with envious longing, just think that this handsome Heaven-blest couple have early had their share in the miseries of life. These two married lovers will probably be the Vicomte de Portenduère and his wife. There are not two such couples in Paris.

“Theirs is the greatest happiness I have ever seen,” was said of them lately by the Comtesse de l’Estorade.

So bless these happy children instead of envying them, and look for another Ursule Mirouët, a young girl brought up by three old men, and the best of mothers—adversity.