"She was a very notable woman, la belle Verrière, as she was called; and she managed the glass factory for many years after her husband's death, and made lots of money for her two daughters."
"How strange!" I exclaimed; "Gatienne Aubéry! Dame du Brail—Budes—the names are quite familiar to me. Mathurin Budes, Seigneur de Monhoudéard et de Verny le Moustier."
"Yes, that's it. How wonderful that you should know! One daughter, Jeanne, married my greatgrandfather, an officer in the Hungarian army; and Seraskier, the fiddler, was their only child. The other (so like her sister that only her mother could distinguish them) was called Anne, and married a Comte de Bois something."
"Boismorinel. Why, all those names are in my family too. My father used to make me paint their arms and quarterings when I was a child, on Sunday mornings, to keep me quiet. Perhaps we are related by blood, you and I."
"Oh, that would be too delightful!" said Mary. "I wonder how we could find out? Have you no family papers?"
I. "There were lots of them, in a horse-hair trunk, but I don't know where they are now. What good would family papers have been to me? Ibbetson took charge of them when I changed my name. I suppose his lawyers have got them."
She. "Happy thought; we will do without lawyers. Let us go round to your old house, and make Gogo paint the quarterings over again for us, and look over his shoulder."
Happy thought, indeed! We drank our coffee and went straight to my old house, with the wish (immediate father to the deed) that Gogo should be there, once more engaged in his long forgotten accomplishment of painting coats of arms.
It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and we found Gogo hard at work at a small table by an open window. The floor was covered with old deeds and parchments and family papers; and le beau Pasquier, at another table, was deep in his own pedigree, making notes on the margin—an occupation in which he delighted—and unconsciously humming as he did so. The sunny room was filled with the penetrating soft sound of his voice, as a conservatory is filled with the scent of its flowers.
By the strangest inconsistency my dear father, a genuine republican at heart (for all his fancied loyalty to the white lily of the Bourbons), a would-be scientist, who in reality was far more impressed by a clever and industrious French mechanic than by a prince (and would, I think, have preferred the former's friendship and society), yet took both a pleasure and a pride in his quaint old parchments and obscure quarterings. So would I, perhaps, if things had gone differently with me—for what true democrat, however intolerant of such weakness in others, ever thinks lightly of his own personal claims to aristocratic descent, shadowy as these may be!