Therefore, when Montcornet was presented by Madame de Carigliano,--the Napoleonic duchess, who was now a most devoted adherent of the Bourbons, he was favorably received.

The general asked, in return for his fortune and tender indulgence to his wife, to be appointed to the Royal Guard, with the rank of marquis and peer of France; but the branches of the Troisville family would do no more than promise him their support.
"You know what that means," said the duchess to her old friend, who complained of the vagueness of the promise.

"They cannot oblige the king to do as they wish; they can only influence him." Montcornet made Virginie de Troisville his heir in the marriage settlements.

Completely under the control of his wife, as Blondet's letter has already shown, he was still without children, but Louis XVIII.

had received him, and given him the cordon of Saint-Louis, allowing him to quarter his ridiculous arms with those of the Troisvilles, and promising him the title of marquis as soon as he had deserved the peerage by his services.
A few days after the audience at which this promise had been given, the Duc de Barry was assassinated; the Marsan clique carried the day; the Villele ministry came into power, and all the wires laid by the Troisvilles were snapped; it became necessary to find new ways of fastening them upon the ministry.
"We must bide our time," said the Troisvilles to Montcornet, who was always overwhelmed with politeness in the faubourg Saint-Germain.
This will explain how it was that the general did not return to Les Aigues until May, 1820.
The ineffable happiness of the son of a shop-keeper of the faubourg Saint-Antoine in possessing a young, elegant, intelligent, and gentle wife, a Troisville, who had given him an entrance into all the salons of the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the delight of making her enjoy the pleasures of Paris, had kept him from Les Aigues and made him forget about Gaubertin, even to his very name.