In the space of one year, during which he played constantly for a rise, he made himself a personal fortune almost as considerable as that of his wife.
But all these foreboding prophecies, these perturbing innovations, were superseded and surpassed by an event connected with this marriage which gave a still more fatal aspect to it.
On the very evening of the ceremony, Athanase and his mother were sitting, after their dinner, over a little fire of fagots, which the servant lighted usually at dessert.
"Well, we will go this evening to the du Roncerets', inasmuch as we have lost Mademoiselle Cormon," said Madame Granson.

"Heavens! how shall I ever accustom myself to call her Madame du Bousquier! that name burns my lips." Athanase looked at his mother with a constrained and melancholy air; he could not smile; but he seemed to wish to welcome that naive sentiment which soothed his wound, though it could not cure his anguish.
"Mamma," he said, in the voice of his childhood, so tender was it, and using the name he had abandoned for several years,--"my dear mamma, do not let us go out just yet; it is so pleasant here before the fire." The mother heard, without comprehending, that supreme prayer of a mortal sorrow.
"Yes, let us stay, my child," she said.

"I like much better to talk with you and listen to your projects than to play at boston and lose my money." "You are so handsome to-night I love to look at you.

Besides, I am in a current of ideas which harmonize with this poor little salon where we have suffered so much." "And where we shall still suffer, my poor Athanase, until your works succeed.

For myself, I am trained to poverty; but you, my treasure! to see your youth go by without a joy! nothing but toil for my poor boy in life! That thought is like an illness to a mother; it tortures me at night; it wakes me in the morning.