Mme.
Blondet did what she could to teach her son to look to the
Troisvilles, to found a lasting attachment on a children's game of
"make-believe" love, which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances
usually do. When Mlle. de Troisville's marriage with General
Montcornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a dying woman, went to the
bride and solemnly implored her never to abandon Emile, and to use her
influence for him in society in Paris, whither the General's fortune
summoned her to shine.
Luckily for Emile, he was able to make his own way. He made his
appearance, at the age of twenty, as one of the masters of modern
literature; and met with no less success in the society into which he
was launched by the father who at first could afford to bear the
expense of the young man's extravagance. Perhaps Emile's precocious
celebrity and the good figure that he made strengthened the bonds of
his friendship with the Countess. Perhaps Mme. de Montcornet, with the
Russian blood in her veins (her mother was the daughter of the
Princess Scherbelloff), might have cast off the friend of her
childhood if he had been a poor man struggling with all his might
among the difficulties which beset a man of letters in Paris; but by
the time that the real strain of Emile's adventurous life began, their
attachment was unalterable on either side.
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