TWO:With these and all the different relations of her husband, Mme. dAyen lived in the greatest harmony, [176] especially with his sister, the Duchesse de Lesparre, a calm, holy, angelic woman after her own heart.
TWO:At last they arrived at Moudon, her father led her into a room in the inn, closed the door and began by telling her as gently as possible that he had just lost his mother, the Marchale de Noailles. He stopped, seeing the deadly paleness of his daughter, who knew by his face that he had not told all.Two or three years before the marriage of the [170] young M. and Mme. dAyen, his father the Duke, who was captain in the gardes-du-corps, [62] was consulted by one of the guards of his regiment, who in much perplexity showed him a costly snuff-box which had been mysteriously sent him, and in which was a note as follows: Ceci vous sera prcieux; on vous avertira bient?t de quelle main il vient. [63]
THREE:I got up and made a copy of this letter ... but on fixing my eyes on the letters in white ink on black paper ... I saw them disappear. I recognised in this phenomenon a chemical preparation by which the mysterious characters would become absorbed after a certain time. [101]The party who, like the more sensible and moderate reformers, wished only for the abolition of abuses, and for such considerable reforms in the government and laws as should give freedom and gradual prosperity to the whole nation, without destroying or plundering one class for the benefit of another, vainly imagined that they would establish a constitution like that which in England had been the growth of centuries, in a few days or weeks, amongst a people totally different in every characteristic, quite unaccustomed to freedom, self-government, or calm deliberation, and exasperated by generations of tyranny.