a noble long relegated to the obscurity of his manor-house, scion though he was of the younger branch of one of the oldest families in the south of France.  There had been a Negrepelisse among the hostages of St. Louis.  The head of the elder branch, however, had borne the illustrious name of d’Espard since the reign of Henri Quatre, when the Negrepelisse of that day married an heiress of the d’Espard family.  As for M. de Negrepelisse, the younger son of a younger son, he lived upon his wife’s property, a small estate in the neighborhood of Barbezieux, farming the land to admiration, selling his corn in the market himself, and distilling his own brandy, laughing at those who ridiculed him, so long as he could pile up silver crowns, and now and again round out his estate with another bit of land.

Circumstances unusual enough in out-of-the-way places in the country had inspired Mme. de Bargeton with a taste for music and reading.  During the Revolution one Abbe Niollant, the Abbe Roze’s best pupil, found a hiding-place in the old manor-house of Escarbas, and brought with him his baggage of musical compositions.  The old country gentleman’s hospitality was handsomely repaid, for the Abbe undertook his daughter’s education.  Anais, or Nais, as she was called must otherwise have been left to herself, or, worse still, to some coarse-minded servant-maid.  The Abbe was not only a musician, he was well and widely read, and knew both Italian and German; so Mlle. de Negrepelise received instruction in those tongues, as well as in counterpoint.  He explained the great masterpieces of the French, German, and Italian literatures, and deciphered with her the music of the great composers.  Finally, as time hung heavy on his hands in the seclusion enforced by political storms, he taught his pupil Latin and Greek and some smatterings of natural science.  A mother might have modified the effects of a man’s education upon a young girl, whose independent spirit had been fostered in the first place by a country life.  The Abbe Niollant, an enthusiast and a poet, possessed the artistic temperament in a peculiarly high degree, a temperament compatible with many estimable qualities, but prone to raise itself above bourgeois prejudices by the liberty of its judgments and breadth of view.  In society an intellect of this order wins pardon for its boldness by its depth and originality; but in private life it would seem to do positive mischief, by suggesting wanderings from the beaten track.  The Abbe was by no means wanting in goodness of heart, and his ideas were therefore the more contagious for this high-spirited girl, in whom they were confirmed by a lonely life.  The Abbe Niollant’s pupil learned to be fearless in criticism and ready in judgement; it never occurred to her tutor that qualities so necessary in a man are disadvantages in a woman destined for the homely life of a house-mother.  And though the Abbe constantly impressed it upon his pupil that it behoved her to