this infatuation of the lieutenant of six-and-twenty for one four years his senior, and of the humblest extraction, and whose life hitherto had not been blameless, was naturally regarded as utterly disastrous by his elders.
The devoted pair were married secretly at Paris in 1804; and on the 5th of July in the same year—the last of the French Republic and the first of the Empire—their daughter entered the world, receiving the name of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore.
The discovery of the mésalliance she had been dreading for some time, and which her son had not dared to confess to her, was a heavy blow to old Madame Dupin. However she schooled herself to forgive what was irrevocable, and to acknowledge this most unwelcome daughter-in-law, the infant Aurore helping unconsciously to effect the reconciliation. But for more than three years M. Dupin's mother and his wife scarcely ever met. Madame Dupin mère was living in a retired part of the country, in the very centre of France, on the little property of Nohant, which she had bought with what the Revolution had left her out of her late husband's fortune. Maurice, now Captain Dupin and aide-de-camp to Murat, resided, when not on service, in Paris where he had settled with his wife and child. The union, strange though it may seem, continued to be a happy one. Besides a strong attachment there existed a real conformity of disposi-
