M. Camusot's father's money was not
likely to come to them for a long time; and, rich as he was, he would
scarcely leave more than eight or ten thousand francs a year to each
of his children, four in number, for he had been married twice. And
besides, by the time that all "expectations," as matchmakers call
them, were realized, would not the magistrate have children of his own
to settle in life? Any one can imagine the situation for a little
woman with plenty of sense and determination, and Mme. Camusot was
such a woman. She did not refrain from meddling in matters judicial.
She had far too strong a sense of the gravity of a false step in her
husband's career.
She was the only child of an old servant of Louis XVIII., a valet who
had followed his master in his wanderings in Italy, Courland, and
England, till after the Restoration the King awarded him with the one
place that he could fill at Court, and made him usher by rotation to
the royal cabinet. So in Amelie's home there had been, as it were, a
sort of reflection of the Court. Thirion used to tell her about the
lords, and ministers, and great men whom he announced and introduced
and saw passing to and fro. The girl, brought up at the gates of the
Tuileries, had caught some tincture of the maxims practised there, and
adopted the dogma of passive obedience to authority.
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