The Duc and Duchesse de Grandlieu, on coming home in 1804, were the object of the Emperor’s advances; indeed, Napoleon, seeing them come to his court, restored to them all of the Grandlieu estates that had been confiscated to the nation, to the amount of about forty thousand francs a year.  Of all the great nobles of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who allowed themselves to be won over by Napoleon, this Duke and Duchess—­she was an Ajuda of the senior branch, and connected with the Braganzas—­were the only family who afterwards never disowned him and his liberality.  When the Faubourg Saint-Germain remembered this as a crime against the Grandlieus, Louis XVIII. respected them for it; but perhaps his only object was to annoy Monsieur.

A marriage was considered likely between the young Vicomte de Grandlieu and Marie-Athenais, the Duke’s youngest daughter, now nine years old.  Sabine, the youngest but one, married the Baron du Guenic after the revolution of July 1830; Josephine, the third, became Madame d’Ajuda-Pinto after the death of the Marquis’ first wife, Mademoiselle de Rochefide, or Rochegude.  The eldest had taken the veil in 1822.  The second, Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique, at this time seven-and-twenty years of age, was deeply in love with Lucien de Rubempre.  It need not be asked whether the Duc de Grandlieu’s mansion, one of the finest in the Rue Saint-Dominique, did not exert a thousand spells over Lucien’s imagination.  Every time the heavy gate turned on its hinges to admit his cab, he experienced the gratified vanity to which Mirabeau confessed.

“Though my father was a mere druggist at l’Houmeau, I may enter here!” This was his thought.

And, indeed, he would have committed far worse crimes than allying himself with a forger to preserve his right to mount the steps of that entrance, to hear himself announced, “Monsieur de Rubempre” at the door of the fine Louis XIV. drawing-room, decorated in the time of the grand monarque on the pattern of those at Versailles, where that choicest circle met, that cream of Paris society, called then le petit chateau.

The noble Portuguese lady, one of those who never care to go out of their own home, was usually the centre of her neighbors’ attentions —­the Chaulieus, the Navarreins, the Lenoncourts.  The pretty Baronne de Macumer—­nee de Chaulieu—­the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Madame d’Espard, Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches—­a connection of the Grandlieus, who are a Breton family—­were frequent visitors on their way to a ball or on their return from the opera.  The Vicomte de Grandlieu, the Duc de Rhetore, the Marquis de Chaulieu—­afterwards Duc de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu—­his wife, Madeleine de Mortsauf, the Duc de Lenoncourt’s grand-daughter, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, the Prince de Blamont-Chauvry, the Marquis de Beauseant, the Vidame de Pamiers, the Vandenesses, the old Prince de Cadignan, and his son the Duc de Maufrigneuse, were constantly to be seen in this stately drawing-room, where they breathed the atmosphere of a Court, where manners, tone, and wit were in harmony with the dignity of the Master and Mistress whose aristocratic mien and magnificence had obliterated the memory of their servility to Napoleon.