On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to be
sustained. To him they looked, of him they thought, in the long dreary
winter evenings during which the mother nodded over her knitting, the
father slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at her
needle-work by her little table of _palissandre_.
He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of study,
bringing with him life and light and gladness, as it seemed to the two
women who adored him; and now, in the winter of 1828, they expected
another visit. He was to be with them on the first day of the new year.
He was to stay with them till his Mother's fete--the 17th of January.
The father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety. The
mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she who loved her
brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could be more anxious than
usual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, a dire conspiracy, of which
Gustave was to be the subject and victim, had been concocted beneath that
innocent-seeming roof. Father, mother, and sister, seated round the
family hearth, fatal as some domestic Parcae, had hatched their horrid
scheme, while the helpless lad amused himself yonder in the great city,
happily unconscious of the web that was being woven to enmesh him.
The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame held, the
needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were employed in the
fabrication of a matrimonial net.
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