There are, happily, some natures which indulgence cannot injure; some
luxuriant flowers which attain strength as well as beauty under the
influence of these tropical heats of affection. Gustave the second
possessed all the noble qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous,
brave, constant, affectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the failing
eyes of his kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal
Hercules.
Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so passionately
desired are apt to be granted when the desire has grown somewhat cold and
dead. Thus it was with the ambition of Francois Lenoble. He lived to see
the lands of Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his
grandson, who married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame
de Nerague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Cotenoir; but the
sons withered and faded in early boyhood, and even the daughter, though
considered a flourishing plant in that poor garden of weakling blossoms,
was but a fragile creature.
The old people at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and chatelaine of
Cotenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery lieutenant, who fell
in Algeria without having attained his captaincy, or added any military
renown to the good old name of de Nerague in his own magnificent person.
Francois saw his grandson established at Cotenoir before he died.
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