"An affair only on my unfortunate side," Germain admitted gloomily.
"As on that of many another. Your Cyrène is the bearer of a very great name: she is a Montmorency."
"A Montmorency!"
"Yes; she is a widow, you see."
"Never."
"While an orphan. Her father, the Vicomte Luc de Montmorency, who was a madman of a spendthrift, ended up in two bankruptcies, and was banished from Court. Cyrène was brought up in a mouldy old château near St. Ouen. When only thirteen her hand was sought by an ambitious financier, Trochu, for his son, Baron la Roche Vernay, who was then with his regiment in Dominica. Money was necessary to the Vicomte, and, in short, Mademoiselle was sold for two million livres, and the marriage celebrated by proxy, as both the fathers were impatient to finish the bargain. It appeared by the mails that the young man died of fever two days after.
"She wears no mourning," said Germain.
"Her father forbade it, and he brought her back with her dowry at once to his own roof, away from the Trochus."
"But why is such a beautiful woman not married again?"
"Do you not know that at the Court nobody except the bald and toothless marries, except for fortune. There are plenty of lovers, but no husbands. Because she is poor she is passed about in the family, sometimes as lady of honour to the Princess, sometimes to the Maréchale de Noailles, her grand-aunt."