The
joyous peace of her childhood was far less sweet to her than a single
one of the troubles scattered upon the last two years of her
childhood,--years that were rich in treasures now buried forever in
her heart.
The vision brought her suddenly to that morning, that ravishing
morning, when in the grand old parlor panelled and carved in oak,
which served the family as a dining-room, she saw her handsome cousin
for the first time. Alarmed by the seditions in Paris, her mother's
family had sent the young courtier to Rouen, hoping that he could
there be trained to the duties of the magistracy by his uncle, whose
office might some day devolve upon him. The countess smiled
involuntarily as she remembered the haste with which she retired on
seeing this relation whom she did not know. But, in spite of the
rapidity with which she opened and shut the door, a single glance had
put into her soul so vigorous an impression of the scene that even at
this moment she seemed to see it still occurring. Her eye again
wandered from the violet velvet mantle embroidered with gold and lined
with satin to the spurs on the boots, the pretty lozenges slashed into
the doublet, the trunk-hose, and the rich collaret which gave to view
a throat as white as the lace around it.
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