VICTIM OF S. J.
PRAY FOR ME
1682.
And on the reverse, the words:
AT PARIS, SAINT FRANCOIS STREET, NO. 3
IN A CENTURY AND A HALF YOU WILL BE
FEBRUARY THE 13TH, 1832.
"It is by means of these medals, handed down from generation to generation, that the Rennepont heirs will one day be reunited here, in this, the house of their ancestor."
"My friend," asked Bathsheba, "in the note you were dictating to me for our friend Levi, you made mention of a Lebrenn family, related to Monsieur Rennepont, which, in spite of its relationship, will probably not partake in the division of the fortune. Whence and why this exclusion?"
"I learned from my father that the grandfather of Monsieur Rennepont, after his abjuration, conceived the greatest aversion for his relatives of the Lebrenn branch, severed all connection with them, and even concealed the fact of their existence from his son, out of dread to submit him some day to the influence of that family, the implacable enemy, as it was, of the Church."
"And did the father of Monsieur Marius Rennepont remain true to the Roman faith?"
"He did, my beloved Bathsheba; but his son, Monsieur Marius himself, reaching the age of reason shortly after his father's death, embraced Protestantism, which still later he feigned to renounce, in order to protect his fortune for his son—a regrettable act of weakness."
"How, then, was the existence of this Lebrenn branch discovered? It all grows more and more mysterious to me, and whets my curiosity."
"Shortly before his death, by suicide, Monsieur Marius Rennepont was looking over some family papers running back to the Sixteenth Century, to the period of the religious wars. There he found to a certainty proof of the connection between the Renneponts and the Lebrenns. But whether the latter had left any descendants he was unable to determine."