He occupied
the little pavilion where his mother had long previously given birth to
his brother Gervais. His wife Charlotte had conquered the Beauchenes by
her fair grace, her charming, bouquet-like freshness, to such a point,
indeed, that even Constance had desired to have her near her. The truth
was that Madame Desvignes had made adorable creatures of her two
daughters, Charlotte and Marthe. At the death of her husband, a
stockbroker's confidential clerk, who had died, leaving her at thirty
years of age in very indifferent circumstances, she had gathered her
scanty means together and withdrawn to Janville, her native place, where
she had entirely devoted herself to her daughters' education. Knowing
that they would be almost portionless, she had brought them up extremely
well, in the hope that this might help to find them husbands, and it so
chanced that she proved successful.
Affectionate intercourse sprang up between her and the Froments; the
children played together; and it was, indeed, from those first games that
came the love-romance which was to end in the marriage of Blaise and
Charlotte. By the time the latter reached her eighteenth birthday and
married, Marthe her sister, then fourteen years old, had become the
inseparable companion of Rose Froment, who was of the same age and as
pretty as herself, though dark instead of fair.
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