The Duc de Maufrigneuse, like a true son of the old Prince de Cadignan, is a tall, lean man, of elegant shape, very graceful, a sayer of witty things, colonel by the grace of God, and a good soldier by accident; brave as a Pole, which means without sense or discernment, and hiding the emptiness of his mind under the jargon of good society.After the age of thirty-six he was forced to be as absolutely indifferent to the fair sex as his master Charles X., punished, like that master, for having pleased it too well.For eighteen years the idol of the faubourg Saint-Germain, he had, like other heirs of great families led a dissipated life, spent solely on pleasure.His father, ruined by the revolution, had somewhat recovered his position on the return of the Bourbons, as governor of a royal domain, with salary and perquisites; but this uncertain fortune the old prince spent, as it came, in keeping up the traditions of a great seigneur before the revolution; so that when the law of indemnity was passed, the sums he received were all swallowed up in the luxury he displayed in his vast hotel.
The old prince died some little time before the revolution of July aged eighty-seven.He had ruined his wife, and had long been on bad terms with the Duc de Navarreins, who had married his daughter for a first wife, and to whom he very reluctantly rendered his accounts.The Duc de Maufrigneuse, early in life, had had relations with the Duchesse d'Uxelles.About the year 1814, when Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was forty-six years of age, the duchess, pitying his poverty, and seeing that he stood very well at court, gave him her daughter Diane, then in her seventeenth year, and possessing, in her own right, some fifty or sixty thousand francs a year, not counting her future expectations.Mademoiselle d'Uxelles thus became a duchess, and, as her mother very well knew, she enjoyed the utmost liberty.The duke, after obtaining the unexpected happiness of an heir, left his wife entirely to her own devices, and went off to amuse himself in the various garrisons of France, returning occasionally to Paris, where he made debts which his father paid.He professed the most entire conjugal indulgence, always giving the duchess a week's warning of his return; he was adored by his regiment, beloved by the Dauphin, an adroit courtier, somewhat of a gambler, and totally devoid of affectation.Having succeeded to his father's office as governor of one of the royal domains, he managed to please the two kings, Louis XVIII.and Charles X., which proves he made the most of his nonentity;and even the liberals liked him; but his conduct and life were covered with the finest varnish; language, noble manners, and deportment were brought by him to a state of perfection.But, as the old prince said, it was impossible for him to continue the traditions of the Cadignans, who were all well known to have ruined their wives, for the duchess was running through her property on her own account.
