The Son Of Monte Cristo Part 5 (1/2)

But Armand eak His friends and fae, now sought to bring him back He resisted for a ti received hiereues, it is not well in you to abandon us thus The throne needs its faithful supporters”

A few days later he was presented to Mademoiselle de Maillezais--her beauty was of that quality that dazzles rather than pleases She made herself very attractive on this occasion, anxious to take back to the king this nobleman who had so nearly been lost

In 1779, Armand married this lady Sie When his father spoke of hie, she replied:

”You will, of course, do as you choose, but I should say that any change would be likely to injure his health”

The Marquis was glad to seize any excuse for keeping Simonne's son away froly conde the wishes of his beloved dead, that he left Si the un by the eneht The nobles and the clergy, feeling their privileges attacked, organized against the Genoese banker a can in which he was to fall The Maillezais family were Nechar's pitiless adversaries, and in spite of hi with them His wife had acquired a supremacy over him that daily increased His weak nature was ever ready to be influenced by others, and his natural enthusiasinally aroused by Simonne for another cause, was perverted to the profit of the _ancien regime_, and finally he was one of the first to applaud the words of Louis XVI, when he signed his name to an edict which inflicted on the country a new debt of four hundred and twenty al_ because _I wish it_”

Nevertheless, the Marquis often thought of Sietic face, her pathetic, eloquent words

Then he longed to see her son, whom his present wife hated She herself had become a mother; the Vicomte Jean Talizac had been held at the baptismal font by the Queen Marie Antoinette

The Marquise determined to oust Simon from his place in his father's heart She but half succeeded in this, and was too wise to attack the memory of the dead

The Marquis wrote in secret to his son, and occasionally went to see hies, and eence and goodness

Then the Vicomte returned like a truant schoolboy to Versailles, and the Marquise brought in her boy with an expression that seemed to say, ”This is your boy! He is the one in whose veins runs only noble blood!”

In 1787 the Marquis was dangerously ill His as devoted to hiently:

”Shall I send for the peasant's child?”

He closed his eyes and did not reply When, after long weeks of illness, he was restored to health, he belonged to the Marquise He never spoke of his eldest child, and adored Jean

Then caereues, friend of Conde and of Polignac, yielded to his wife's entreaties and joined the Prince de Conde at Worainst France Although yielding to the wishes of the Marquise, De Fongereues was fully aware that it was a base act to desert his country, and excite against her the hatred of herSimon, the son of the peasant, could not join in this parricidal act, although the Marquis sent Pierre Labarre, as even then in his service, to his son, then fifteen years of age, to sound his views If the youth would enter the army of Conde, the Marquis assured him a brilliant future If he reer rely on his father, who, however, sent hie sum of money The youth refused the money, and replied:

”Say to my father that I love hieous arm that he may summon me to his side; but now, if I am to choose between poverty in n land, I reh his lips!” e sent by the young man

The father and son did not , to that room where Pierre Labarre had just told the Marquis that Si

Twenty-five years had elapsed--twenty-five years of anguish and sorrow for the Marquis He had seen France fighting with heroic energy against all Europe He had heard the enthusiastic shouts of 1792, and then the dull groans of the people crushed under the heel of the conqueror And while his country bled and fought, the Marquis blushed with shame in London, Berlin and Vienna when his French ears heard the maledictions of the conquered

As soon as his son, the Vicoe of twenty, he had becoents of the coalition, and, as if to indicate his hatred of France, married a Ger but abuse of France, nothing but exultation when her sons fell in Spain or in Russia The old man's heart was sore within him, but it was then too late for hied to live on ao to France to lend his aid to Cadondal's conspiracy, but he was obliged to flee precipitately, and with difficulty succeeded in gaining the frontier On his return he was in a state of sullen rage Was it despair at his lack of success, or did the Vicomte feel any remorse? His father watched him with troubled eyes and many fears, but did not dare ask a question

What had become of Siere carried the orders of the day at the battle of Hohenlinden He leaped at once at the truth Si for his country, while his other son, the Vicoainst it

Suddenly the Marquis beheld the fall of the Ieance was near at hand!