* * *
François, baron des Ygrées (a doubtful baronetcy belonging to whoever claimed it) called himself the last offshoot of a noble house of Provence and pursued a career in heraldry on the sixth floor of an apartment in the rue Charles V.
"But," he said, "the revolutions and the demagogues have changed things so that arms are no longer studied except by ill-born archaeologists, and the nobility is no longer tutored in this art."
The baron des Ygrées, whose coat of arms was of azur à trois pairies d'argent posés en pal, was able to inspire enough sympathy in Macarée for her to want to take lessons in heraldry out of gratitude for that night at the Théâtre Français.
Macarée showed herself, it is true, little given to learning the terminology of heraldry, and one might even say that she did not interest herself seriously in anything but the arms of the Pignatelli who had furnished popes for the Church and whose coat-of-arms was adorned with kettles.
However, these lessons were wasted time to neither Macarée nor François des Ygrées, for they ended by marrying. Macarée brought as her dot, her money, her beauty and her fatness. François des Ygrées offered to Macarée a great name and his noble bearing.
Neither complained of the bargain and they found themselves very happy.
"Macarée, my dear wife," said François des Ygrées a few days after their marriage, "Why have you ordered so many robes? It seems to me that hardly a day passes without some modiste brings new costumes. They do, true enough, honor to your taste and to their skill."
Macarée hesitated for a moment and then replied:
"It is to our honeymoon that you refer, François!"