Ere long, however, it was surmised that
Victorine found herself not quite so happy in her union with the object
of her first affection as she had anticipated she should be; she was
pale, spiritless, and absent; sometimes started when addressed, as if
only accustomed to the accents of authority unmingled with kindness; her
cheeks were hollow, her eyes sunken and ray-less, and her smile was the
very mockery of mirth; evidently she was not happy, and the apparently
affectionate attentions lavished upon her by the comte, tended not to
diminish suspicions that he was not altogether so amiable at home, as he
took pains to appear in society. However, balls and fetes followed the
union of the young couple very gaily for some months, and everybody said
that the Comtesse de Villeroi, rich, beautiful, and beloved, ought to be
the happiest creature in existence.
Something more than a year after the demise of the Marquess de
Montespan, Paris was thrown into considerable consternation by a report
originating with some of the petty officers of the sacred establishment,
that the church of St. Genevieve was haunted; old Albert Morel, the
sexton, protesting upon the faith of a good Catholic, that he had heard,
when occasionally in the church, alone, a strange rattling noise
proceed from the vaults beneath it. "What this could be," he remarked,
"was past comprehension, unless it were ghosts playing at skittles
with their own dead bones.
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