She had often said she meant to practise alone for the future.
The whole thing was a mystery.
The Comte de Chagny, standing up in his box, listened to all this
frenzy and took part in it by loudly applauding. Philippe Georges
Marie Comte de Chagny was just forty-one years of age.
He was a great aristocrat and a good-looking man, above middle
height and with attractive features, in spite of his hard forehead
and his rather cold eyes. He was exquisitely polite to the women
and a little haughty to the men, who did not always forgive him
for his successes in society. He had an excellent heart and an
irreproachable conscience. On the death of old Count Philibert,
he became the head of one of the oldest and most distinguished
families in France, whose arms dated back to the fourteenth century.
The Chagnys owned a great deal of property; and, when the old count,
who was a widower, died, it was no easy task for Philippe to accept
the management of so large an estate. His two sisters and his
brother, Raoul, would not hear of a division and waived their claim
to their shares, leaving themselves entirely in Philippe's hands,
as though the right of primogeniture had never ceased to exist.
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