"
Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the brightest and
the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him no trouble, except when
they asked him for a home.
"It seems so dull and dreary at Cotenoir, papa," they said, "though you
are always so kind. It doesn't seem like home. Beaubocage is more
home-like. At Cotenoir, when you are out, there is no one to talk to; and
we have no little parties, no excursions into the country, none of those
pleasures which the other girls tell us they have during the holidays."
This was the gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and
Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something
which was wanting to make Cotenoir a pleasant home. The girls could
complain of no restraint, or pine for no indulgence, since their father
was always prompt to gratify every whim. But there was some element of
happiness wanting, nevertheless; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so.
The life at Cotenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual
dawdling; a life of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, projects
begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, the household angel,
order, was wanting in that mansion. There was waste, dirt, destruction of
all kinds, in the rambling old chateau; old servants, too weak or too
lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of
imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right--for the
feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands.
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