came very near marrying the niece of Mazarin, a parvenu." "Mazarin himself opposed it." "Remember the widow Scarron." "She was a d'Aubigne.

Besides, the marriage was in secret.

But I am very old, my son," she said, shaking her head.

"When I am no more you can, as you say, marry whom you please." Savinien both loved and respected his mother; but he instantly, though silently, set himself in opposition to her with an obstinacy equal to her own, resolving to have no other wife than Ursula, to whom this opposition gave, as often happens in similar circumstances, the value of a forbidden thing.
When, after vespers, the doctor, with Ursula, who was dressed in pink and white, entered the cold, stiff salon, the girl was seized with nervous trembling, as though she had entered the presence of the queen of France and had a favor to beg of her.

Since her confession to the doctor this little house had assumed the proportions of a palace in her eyes, and the old lady herself the social value which a duchess of the Middle Ages might have had to the daughter of a serf.