Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/35

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
SECOND MARRIAGE.
29

might be employed connectedly at any rate. He made the most rapid progress, and soon surpassed boys twice his age. In due time, he accompanied his elder brother, Peter, to college, at Saumur, and before he had been there a year, he became an object of admiration to professors and students alike. At the end of the second year, he had distinguished himself so much, that he was looked upon as a prodigy for his years, and great hopes and expectations were raised as to his future career, all of which God saw fit to disappoint by taking him to himself soon after. He was too good for this world.

My father was married to his second wife, Marie Chaillon, my mother, in the year 1641. She was from the neighborhood of Pons, in Saintonge, where her father possessed considerable property, and resided at a country place named Rue au Roy, distant about a mile and a half from the town. She was a handsome brunette, twelve years younger than her husband, to whom she brought a marriage portion of four thousand francs, which was expended, by her desire, in the purchase of the small estate of Jenouillé, and the adjacent manor of Jaffé. My father made an addition of several rooms to the house already built upon the property, so that it might comfortably accommodate a few boarders in addition to his own family; for at that time he received pupils to educate with his sons.

The issue of the second marriage was remarkably similar to the first; five children by each, two sons and three daughters, who lived to a marriageable age.

1. Susan, married Stephen Gachot, a grandson, through his mother, of that most excellent, pious, Christian minister, Mr. Merlin, of Rochelle. This circumstance was not without its influence upon my father, in gaining his consent to what