“For my part,” said he, “I can only believe in goodness. Wherever I cast my eyes, I see virtue and honesty. I have been able to prove by numerous instances that the morals of the French women since the Revolution leave nothing to be desired, especially in the middle classes.”
“I am not so optimistic,” replied M. de Terremondre, “but I certainly did not suspect that Queen Marguerite’s house hid such shameful mysteries behind its walls of crumbling woodwork and beneath the cobweb-curtains of its mullioned windows. I went to see Madame Houssieu several times; she seemed to me a miserly and mistrustful old woman, a little mad, yet like so many others. But, as they used to say in the time of Queen Marguerite:
“She is under the sod.
Her soul be with God![M]
She will no longer, by her lewdness, blot the scutcheon of good Philippe Tricouillard.”
[M] “Elle est sous lame.
Dieu ait son âme!”
At that name a shout of merry laughter burst from their knowing faces. It was the secret joy and inward pride of the town, that emblematic shield, with its witness to the triple virtue and power that put this bourgeois ancestor of theirs on a level with the great condottiere of Bergamo. The people of … loved him, their lusty forebear, the contemporary of the king in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, their ancient alderman Philippe Tricouillard, about whom, to tell the truth, they knew nothing save the gift of nature to which he owed his illustrious surname.
The turn taken by the conversation led Dr. Fornerol to say that several instances had been cited of a similar anomaly, and that certain writers declare that at times this honourable monstrosity is transmitted hereditarily and becomes persistent in a family. Unluckily the line of the worthy Philippe had been extinct for more than two hundred years.
After this remark, M. de Terremondre, who was president of the Archæological Society, related a true anecdote.