It was not hard for the old mansion to forgive him once or twice; but she had had to do it often.

It seems no over-stretch of fancy to say she sometimes gazed down upon his erring ways with a look of patient sadness in her large and beautiful windows.
And how had that forbearance been rewarded?
Take one short instance: when, seven years before this present _fete de grandpere_, he came back from Europe, and she (this old home which we cannot help but personify), though in trouble then--a trouble that sent up the old feud flames again--opened her halls to rejoice in him with the joy of all her gathered families, he presently said such strange things in favor of indiscriminate human freedom that for very shame's sake she hushed them up, in the fond hope that he would outgrow such heresies.

But he?
On top of all the rest, he declined a military commission and engaged in commerce--"shopkeeping, _parbleu!_" However, therein was developed a grain of consolation.

Honore became--as he chose to call it--more prudent.

With much tact, Agricola was amiably crowded off the dictator's chair, to become, instead, a sort of seneschal.