Madame de Portenduere the elder, after giving her house
in Nemours to the Sisters of Charity for a free school, went to live at
Rouvre, where La Bougival keeps the porter's lodge. Cabirolle, the
former conductor of the "Ducler," a man sixty years of age, has
married La Bougival and the twelve hundred francs a year which she
possesses besides the ample emoluments of her place. Young Cabirolle
is Monsieur de Portenduere's coachman.
If you happen to see in the Champs-Elysees one of those charming
little low carriages called 'escargots,' lined with gray silk and
trimmed with blue, and containing a pretty young woman whom you admire
because her face is wreathed in innumerable fair curls, her eyes
luminous as forget-me-nots and filled with love; if you see her
bending slightly towards a fine young man, and, if you are, for a
moment, conscious of envy--pause and reflect that this handsome
couple, beloved of God, have paid their quota to the sorrows of life
in times now past. These married lovers are the Vicomte de Portenduere
and his wife. There is not another such home in Paris as theirs.
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