Your daughter will find in me a true and
kind mother, and I am sure that she will find the happiness of her
future life in the contemplated union, for the chevalier is well
qualified to make a wife happy. All that I can say of him exhausts
by no means the praise he deserves. He has a pleasant countenance,
an excellent figure, wit, genius, knowledge, and, what is more than
this, all the noble qualities of heart and soul are united in him,
and he must consequently be loved by all who know him."
Meanwhile, before these letters reached Martinique, chance had
already otherwise decided the fate of Mary, the second daughter of
M. de la Pagerie. With one sentence it had destroyed all the family
schemes. After three days of confinement to a bed of sickness, Mary
had died of a violent fever, and when the letter, in which the
Marquis de Beauharnais asked for her hand, reached her father, she
had been buried three months.
M. Tascher de la Pagerie hastened to announce her death to the
Marquis and to Madame de Renaudin; and to prove to them how much he
also had at heart a union of the two families, he offered to his
son, the chevalier, the hand of his third daughter, the little
twelve-year-old Desiree.
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