That costly ride
useless beauty
the father
my uncle Sosthenes
the baroness
mother and son
the hand
A tress of hair
on the river
the cripple
A stroll
Alexandre
the log
Julie Romaine
the Rondoli Sisters
The household lived frugally on the meager income
derived from the husband’s insignificant appointments.
Two children had been born of the marriage, and the
earlier condition of the strictest economy had become
one of quiet, concealed, shamefaced misery, the poverty
of a noble family—which in spite of misfortune
never forgets its rank.
Hector de Gribelin had been educated in the provinces,
under the paternal roof, by an aged priest. His
people were not rich, but they managed to live and
to keep up appearances.
At twenty years of age they tried to find him a position,
and he entered the Ministry of Marine as a clerk at
sixty pounds a year. He foundered on the rock
of life like all those who have not been early prepared
for its rude struggles, who look at life through a
mist, who do not know how to protect themselves, whose
special aptitudes and faculties have not been developed
from childhood, whose early training has not developed
the rough energy needed for the battle of life or
furnished them with tool or weapon.
His first three years of office work were a martyrdom.
He had, however, renewed the acquaintance of a few
friends of his family —elderly people,
far behind the times, and poor like himself, who lived
in aristocratic streets, the gloomy thoroughfares of
the Faubourg Saint-Germain; and he had created a social
circle for himself.
Strangers to modern life, humble yet proud, these
needy aristocrats lived in the upper stories of sleepy,
old-world houses. From top to bottom of their
dwellings the tenants were titled, but money seemed
just as scarce on the ground floor as in the attics.
Their eternal prejudices, absorption in their rank,
anxiety lest they should lose caste, filled the minds
and thoughts of these families once so brilliant,
now ruined by the idleness of the men of the family.
Hector de Gribelin met in this circle a young girl
as well born and as poor as himself and married her.
They had two children in four years.
For four years more the husband and wife, harassed
by poverty, knew no other distraction than the Sunday
walk in the Champs-Elysees and a few evenings at the
theatre (amounting in all to one or two in the course
of the winter) which they owed to free passes presented
by some comrade or other.
