"I also have a Christian name"—and he bent low, whispering softly in her ear—"my name is Maurice."
She turned towards him with a wan smile, and as he stooped to kiss his affianced bride she melted into tears.
The child was just two years old. The young couple took him with them in their travels. They then established themselves at Pontivy, near the grandfather, who had softened towards his daughter since her marriage, partly won by the baby charm of his grandchild. Their visits to Paris became less frequent, for Monsieur de Mauluçon, in order better to enjoy his home life, obtained an unlimited leave of absence. He now devoted himself to Olivier's education, who was growing up a bright, frank, and affectionate boy. Except Monsieur de Pontivy and Clarisse's brother Jacques, no one but themselves knew the story of his birth. Jacques de Pontivy, recently married, had kept it even from his wife, who died, however, some months after giving birth to a baby girl, whom Clarisse now loved as much as her own Olivier.
Life seemed to smile at last upon the poor woman, when the Revolution broke out. Jacques de Pontivy, who had intended to succeed his father in Parliament, seeing the Royal Family menaced, entered the army, which Monsieur de Mauluçon had also rejoined. Both endeavoured several times to give open proof of their loyal sentiments. They covered the flight of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and were nearly taken at the arrest of the King and Queen on their way to Varennes, and the next year they were obliged to fly from France, and both sought refuge in England, resolved to serve the Royalist cause with all their energy and devotion to the last.
Clarisse, who had remained at Paris with her husband during those stormy times, now rejoined her father at the Château de Pontivy, with Olivier and little Marie Thérèse.
Monsieur de Pontivy, whose health was fast failing, was struck to the heart by the rapid march of events and the sudden collapse of all his most cherished surroundings.
"There is nothing left but to die," he would say sometimes, looking on with indifference at the vain attempts of his son and son-in-law, whose firm faith and enthusiasm he no longer understood, tired and disgusted as he was with everything.
Another tie which bound Clarisse to France was the charge of the two children. Almost grown up now, they were still too young to be exposed to the danger of travelling in such uncertain times, when the frontiers were scarcely guarded, and France was committed to a course which had estranged her from the nations of Europe.
But when Clarisse heard that Monsieur de Mauluçon and her brother were on the eve of leaving London for Southampton to rejoin the royal army in Vendée, she hesitated no longer.
Confiding the children to their grandfather's care, she left Pontivy, and arrived in London, to find her husband and brother at the house of a mutual friend, Benjamin Vaughan, whose acquaintance they had made at the American Embassy in Paris, at a reception on the anniversary of the United States Independence, and with whom they had become intimate.