First Part Chapter 32

I dine at home only when we have friends, so-called, with us, and
spend the afternoon there only on my day, for I have a day now
--Wednesday--for receiving. I have entered the lists with Mmes. d'Espard
and de Maufrigneuse, and with the old Duchesse de Lenoncourt, and my
house has the reputation of being a very lively one. I allowed myself
to become the fashion, because I saw how much pleasure my success gave
Felipe.

My mornings are his; from four in the afternoon till two in
the morning I belong to Paris. Macumer makes an admirable host, witty
and dignified, perfect in courtesy, and with an air of real
distinction. No woman could help loving such a husband even if she had
chosen him without consulting her heart.

My father and mother have left for Madrid. Louis XVIII. being out of
the way, the Duchess had no difficulty in obtaining from our
good-natured Charles X. the appointment of her fascinating poet; so he
is carried off in the capacity of attache.

My brother, the Duc de Rhetore, deigns to recognize me as a person of
mark. As for my younger brother, The Comte de Chaulieu, this buckram
warrior owes me everlasting gratitude. Before my father left, he spent
my fortune in acquiring for the Count an estate of forty thousand
francs a year, entailed on the title, and his marriage with Mlle. de
Mortsauf, an heiress from Touraine, is definitely arranged. The King,
in order to preserve the name and titles of the de Lenoncourt and de
Givry families from extinction, is to confer these, together with the
armorial bearings, by patent on my brother. Certainly it would never
have done to allow these two fine names and their splendid motto,
Faciem semper monstramus, to perish. Mlle. de Mortsauf, who is
granddaughter and sole heiress of the Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry, will,
it is said, inherit altogether more than one hundred thousand livres a
year.