Author: Honoré de Balzac
Date: 2024-12-23T21:41:42+00:00
Keywords: France -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; French fiction -- Translations into English
Description: A young couple work through the details of negotiating a marriage contract.
Publisher: Standard Ebooks

A Marriage Settlement

By Honoré de Balzac.

Translated by Clara Bell.

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To G. Rossini

A Marriage Settlement

Monsieur de Manerville the elder was a worthy gentleman of Normandy, well known to the Maréchal de Richelieu, who arranged his marriage with one of the richest heiresses of Bordeaux at the time when the old Duke held court in that city as Governor of Guienne. The Norman gentleman sold the lands he owned in Bessin, and established himself as a Gascon, tempted to this step by the beauty of the estate of Lanstrac, a delightful residence belonging to his wife. Towards the end of Louis XV’s reign, he purchased the post of Major of the King’s bodyguard, and lived till 1813, having happily survived the Revolution.

This was how. In the winter of 1790 he made a voyage to Martinique, where his wife had property, leaving the management of his estates in Gascony to a worthy notary’s clerk named Mathias, who had some taint of the new ideas. On his return, the Comte de Manerville found his possessions safe and profitably managed. This shrewdness was the fruit of a graft of the Gascon on the Norman.

Madame de Manerville died in 1810. Her husband, having learned by the dissipations of his youth the importance of money, and, like many old men, ascribing to it a greater power in life than it possesses, Monsieur de Manerville became progressively thrifty, avaricious, and mean. Forgetting that stingy fathers make spendthrift sons, he allowed scarcely anything to his son, though he was an only child.

Paul de Manerville came home from college at Vendôme towards the end of 1810, and for three years lived under his father’s rule. The tyranny exercised by the old man of sixty-nine over his sole heir could not fail to affect a heart and character as yet unformed. Though he did not lack the physical courage which would seem to be in the air of Gascony, Paul dared not contend with his father, and lost the elasticity of resistance that gives rise to moral courage. His suppressed feelings were pent at the bottom of his heart, where he kept them long in reserve without daring to express them; thus, at a later time, when he felt that they were not in accordance with the maxims of the world, though he could think rightly, he could act wrongly. He would have fought at a word, while he quaked at the thought of sending away a servant; for his shyness found a field in any struggle which demanded persistent determination. Though capable of much to escape persecution, he would never have taken steps to hinder it by systematic antagonism, nor have met it by a steady display of strength. A coward in mind, though bold in action, he preserved till late that unconfessed innocence which makes a man the victim, the voluntary dupe, of things against which such natures hesitate to rebel, preferring to suffer rather than complain.

He was a prisoner in his father’s old house, for he had not money enough to disport himself with the young men of the town; he envied them their amusements, but could not share them. The old gentleman took him out every evening in an antique vehicle, drawn by a pair of shabbily-harnessed horses, attended to by two antique and shabbily-dressed menservants, into the society of a royalist clique, consisting of the waifs of the nobility of the old Parlement and of the sword. These two bodies of magnates, uniting after the Revolution to resist Imperial influence, had by degrees become an aristocracy of landowners. Overpowered by the wealth and the shifting fortunes of a great seaport, this Faubourg Saint-Germain of Bordeaux responded with scorn to the magnificence of commerce and of the civil and military authorities.

Too young to understand social distinctions and the poverty hidden under the conspicuous vanity to which they give rise, Paul was bored to death among these antiques, not knowing that these associations of his youth would secure to him the aristocratic preeminence for which France will always have a weakness.

He found some little compensation for the dreariness of these evenings in certain exercises such as young men love, for his father insisted on them. In the old aristocrat’s eyes, to be a master of all weapons, to ride well, to play tennis, and have fine manners—in short, the superficial training of the gentleman of the past—constituted the accomplished man. So, every morning Paul fenced, rode, and practised with pistols. The rest of his time he spent in novel-reading, for his father would not hear of the transcendental studies which put a finishing touch to education in these days.

So monotonous an existence might have killed the young man, but that his father’s death delivered him from this tyranny at the time when it was becoming unendurable. Paul found that his father’s avarice had accumulated a considerable fortune, and left him an estate in the most splendid order possible; but he had a horror of Bordeaux, and no love for Lanstrac, where his father had always spent the summer and kept him out shooting from morning till night.

As soon as the legal business was got through, the young heir, eager for pleasure, invested his capital in securities, left the management of the land to old Mathias, his father’s agent, and spent six years away from Bordeaux. Attaché at first to the Embassy at Naples, he subsequently went as secretary to Madrid and London, thus making the tour of Europe. After gaining knowledge of the world, and dissipating a great many illusions, after spending all the money his father had saved, a moment came when Paul, to continue this dashing existence, had to draw on the revenues from his estate which the notary had saved for him. So, at this critical moment, struck by one of those impulses which are regarded as wisdom, he resolved to leave Paris, to return to Bordeaux, to manage his own affairs, to lead the life of a country gentleman, settling at Lanstrac and improving his estate—to marry, and one day to be elected Deputy.

Paul was a Count; titles were recovering their value in the matrimonial market; he could, and ought to marry well. Though many women wish to marry for a title, a great many more look for a husband who has an intimate acquaintance with life. And Paul—at a cost of seven hundred thousand francs, consumed in six years—had acquired this official knowledge, a qualification which cannot be sold, and which is worth more than a stockbroker’s license; which, indeed, demands long studies, an apprenticeship, examinations, acquaintances, friends, and enemies, a certain elegance of appearance, good manners, and a handsome, tripping name; which brings with it success with women, duels, betting at races, many disappointments, dull hours, tiresome tasks, and indigestible pleasures.

In spite of lavish outlay, he had never been the fashion. In the burlesque army of the gay world, the man who is the fashion is the Field Marshal of the forces, the merely elegant man is the Lieutenant-General. Still, Paul enjoyed his little reputation for elegance, and lived up to it. His servants were well drilled, his carriages were approved, his suppers had some success, and his bachelor’s den was one of the seven or eight which were a match in luxury for the finest houses in Paris. But he had not broken a woman’s heart; he played without losing, nor had he extraordinarily brilliant luck; he was too honest to be false to anyone, not even a girl of the streets; he did not leave his love-letters about, nor keep a boxful for his friends to dip into while he was shaving or putting a collar on; but, not wishing to damage his estates in Guienne, he had not the audacity that prompts a young man into startling speculations, and attracts all eyes to watch him; he borrowed of no one, and was so wrongheaded as to lend to friends, who cut him and never mentioned him again, either for good or evil. He seemed to have worked out the sum of his extravagance. The secret of his character lay in his father’s tyranny, which had made him a sort of social hybrid.

One morning Paul de Manerville said to a friend of his named de Marsay, who has since become famous:

“My dear fellow, life has a meaning.”

“You must be seven-and-twenty before you understand it,” said de Marsay, laughing at him.

“Yes, I am seven-and-twenty, and for that very reason I mean to go to live at Lanstrac as a country gentleman. At Bordeaux I shall have my father’s old house, whither I shall send my Paris furniture, and I shall spend three months of every winter here in my rooms, which I shall not give up.”

“And you will marry?”

“I shall marry.”

“I am your friend, my worthy Paul, as you know,” said de Marsay, after a moment’s silence; “well, be a good father and a good husband—and ridiculous for the rest of your days. If you could be happy being ridiculous, the matter would deserve consideration; but you would not be happy. You have not a strong enough hand to rule a household. I do you every justice: you are a perfect horseman; no one holds the ribbons better, makes a horse plunge, or keeps his seat more immovably. But, my dear boy, the paces of matrimony are quite another thing. Why, I can see you led at a round pace by Madame la Comtesse de Manerville, galloping, more often than not much against your will, and presently thrown—thrown into the ditch, and left there with both legs broken.

“Listen to me. You have still forty odd thousand francs a year in land in the Department of the Gironde. Take your horses and your servants, and furnish your house in Bordeaux; you will be King in Bordeaux, you will promulgate there the decrees we pronounce in Paris, you will be the corresponding agent of our follies. Well and good. Commit follies in your provincial capital—nay, even absurdities. So much the better; they may make you famous. But—do not marry.

“Who are the men who marry nowadays? Tradesmen, to increase their capital or to have a second hand at the plough; peasants, who, by having large families, manufacture their own laborers; stockbrokers or notaries, to get money to pay for their licenses; the miserable kings, to perpetuate their miserable dynasties. We alone are free from the packsaddle; why insist on loading yourself? In short, what do you marry for? You must account for such a step to your best friend.

“In the first place, if you should find an heiress as rich as yourself, eighty thousand francs a year for two are not the same thing as forty thousand for one, because you very soon are three—and four if you have a child. Do you really feel any affection for the foolish propagation of Manervilles, who will never give anything but trouble? Do you not know what the duties are of a father and mother? Marriage, my deal Paul, is the most foolish of social sacrifices; our children alone profit by it, and even they do not know its cost till their horses are cropping the weeds that grow over our graves.

“Do you, for instance, regret your father, the tyrant who wrecked your young life? How do you propose to make your children love you? Your plans for their education, your care for their advantage, your severity, however necessary, will alienate their affection. Children love a lavish or weak father, but later they will despise him. You are stranded between aversion and contempt. You cannot be a good father for the wishing.

“Look round on our friends, and name one you would like for a son. We have known some who were a disgrace to their name. Children, my dear boy, are a commodity very difficult to keep sweet.—Yours will be angels! No doubt!

“But have you ever measured the gulf that parts the life of a single man from that of a married one? Listen.—As you are, you can say: ‘I will never be ridiculous beyond a certain point; the public shall never think of me excepting as I choose that it should think.’ Married, you will fall into depths of the ridiculous!—Unmarried, you make your own happiness; you want it today, you do without tomorrow: married, you take it as it comes, and the day you seek it you have to do without it. Married, you are an ass; you calculate marriage portions, you talk about public and religious morality, you look upon young men as immoral and dangerous; in short, you are socially Academical. I have nothing but pity for you! An old bachelor, whose relations are waiting for his money, and who struggles with his latest breath to make an old nurse give him something to drink, is in paradise compared with a married man. I say nothing of all the annoying, irritating, provoking, aggravating, stultifying, worrying things that may come to hypnotize and paralyze your mind, and tyrannize over your life, in the course of the petty warfare of two human beings always together, united forever, who have bound themselves, vainly believing that they will agree; no, that would be to repeat Boileau’s satire, and we know it by heart.

“I would forgive you the absurd notion if you would promise to marry like a grandee, to settle your fortune on your eldest son, to take advantage of the honeymoon stage to have two legitimate children, to give your wife a completely separate establishment, to meet her only in society, and never come home from a journey without announcing your return. Two hundred thousand francs a year are enough to do it on, and your antecedents allow of your achieving this by finding some rich English woman hungering for a title. That aristocratic way of life is the only one that seems to me truly French; the only handsome one, commanding a wife’s respect and regard; the only life that distinguishes us from the common herd; in short, the only one for which a young man should ever give up his single blessedness. In such an attitude the Comte de Manerville is an example to his age, he is superior to the general, and must be nothing less than a Minister or an Ambassador. He can never be ridiculous; he conquers the social advantages of a married man, and preserves the privileges of a bachelor.”

“But, my good friend, I am not a de Marsay; I am, as you yourself do me the honor to express it, Paul de Manerville, neither more nor less, a good husband and father, Deputy of the Centre, and perhaps some day a peer of the Upper House—altogether a very humble destiny. But I am diffident—and resigned.”

“And your wife?” said the merciless de Marsay, “will she be resigned?”

“My wife, my dear fellow, will do what I wish.”

“Oh! my poor friend, have you not got beyond that point?—Goodbye, Paul. Henceforth you have forfeited my esteem. Still, one word more, for I cannot subscribe to your abdication in cold blood. Consider what is the strength of our position. If a single man had no more than six thousand francs a year, if his whole fortune lay in his reputation for elegance and the memory of his successes, well, even this fantastic ghost has considerable value. Life still affords some chances for the bachelor ‘off color.’ Yes, he may still aspire to anything. But marriage! Paul, it is the ‘Thus far and no further’ of social existence. Once married, you can never more be anything but what you are—unless your wife condescends to take you in hand.”

“But you are always crushing me under your exceptional theories!” cried Paul. “I am tired of living for the benefit of others—of keeping horses for display, of doing everything with a view to ‘what people will say,’ of ruining myself for fear that idiots should remark: ‘Why, Paul has the same old carriage!—What has he done with his money? Does he squander it? Gamble on the Bourse?—Not at all; he is a millionaire. Madame So-and-So is madly in love with him.—He has just had a team of horses from England, the handsomest in Paris.—At Longchamps, everyone remarked the four-horse chaises of Monsieur de Marsay and Monsieur de Manerville; the cattle were magnificent.’—In short, the thousand idiotic remarks by which the mob of fools drives us.

“I am beginning to see that this life, in which we are simply rolled along by others instead of walking on our feet, wears us out and makes us old. Believe me, my dear Henri, I admire your powers, but I do not envy you. You are capable of judging everything; you can act and think as a statesman, you stand above general laws, received ideas, recognized prejudices, accepted conventionalities; in fact, you get all the benefits of a position in which I, for my part, should find nothing but disaster. Your cold and systematic deductions, which are perhaps quite true, are, in the eyes of the vulgar, appallingly immoral. I belong to the vulgar.

“I must play the game by the rules of the society in which I am compelled to live. You can stand on the summit of human things, on ice peaks, and still have feelings; I should freeze there. The life of the greatest number, of which I am very frankly one, is made up of emotions such as I feel at present in need of. The most popular lady’s man often flirts with ten women at once, and wins the favor of none; and then, whatever his gifts, his practice, his knowledge of the world, a crisis may arise when he finds himself, as it were, jammed between two doors. For my part, I like the quiet and faithful intercourse of home; I want the life where a man always finds a woman at his side.”

“Marriage is a little free and easy!” cried de Marsay.

Paul was not to be dashed, and went on:

“Laugh if you please; I shall be the happiest man in the world when my servant comes to say, ‘Madame is waiting breakfast’—when, on coming home in the afternoon, I may find a heart—”

“You are still too frivolous, Paul! You are not moral enough yet for married life!”

“A heart to which I may confide my business and tell my secrets. I want to live with some being on terms of such intimacy that our affection may not depend on a Yes or No, or on situations where the most engaging man may disappoint passion. In short, I am bold enough to become, as you say, a good husband and a good father! I am suited to domestic happiness, and prepared to submit to the conditions insisted on by society to set up a wife, a family—”

“You suggest the idea of a beehive.—Go ahead, then. You will be a dupe all your days. You mean to marry, to have a wife to yourself? In other words, you want to solve, to your own advantage, the most difficult social problem presented in our day by town life as the French Revolution has left it, so you begin by isolation! And do you suppose that your wife will be content to forego the life you contemn? Will she, like you, be disgusted with it? If you do not want to endure the conjugal joys described by your sincere friend de Marsay, listen to my last advice. Remain unmarried for thirteen years longer, and enjoy yourself to the top of your bent; then, at forty, with your first fit of the gout, marry a widow of six-and-thirty; thus you may be happy. If you take a maid to wife, you will die a madman!”

“Indeed! And tell me why?” cried Paul, somewhat nettled.

“My dear fellow,” replied de Marsay, “Boileau’s Satire on Women is no more than a series of commonplace observations in verse. Why should women be faultless? Why deny them the heritage of the most obvious possession of human nature? In my opinion, the problem of marriage no longer lies in the form in which that critic discerned it. Do you really suppose that, to command affection in marriage, as in love, it is enough for a husband to be a man? You who haunt boudoirs, have you none but fortunate experiences?

“Everything in our bachelor existence prepares a disastrous mistake for the man who marries without having deeply studied the human heart. In the golden days of youth, by a singular fact in our manners, a man always bestows pleasure, he triumphs over fascinated woman, and she submits to his wishes. The obstacles set up by law and feeling, and the natural coyness of woman, give rise to a common impulse on both sides, which deludes superficial men as to their future position in the married state where there are no obstacles to be overcome, where women endure rather than allow a man’s advances, and repel them rather than invite them. The whole aspect of life is altered for us. The unmarried man, free from care, and always the leader, has nothing to fear from a defeat. In married life a repulse is irreparable. Though a lover may make a mistress change her mind in his favor, such a rout, my dear boy, is Waterloo to a husband. A husband, like Napoleon, is bound to gain the victory; however often he may have won, the first defeat is his overthrow. The woman who is flattered by a lover’s persistency, and proud of his wrath, calls them brutal in a husband. The lover may choose his ground and do what he will, the master has no such license, and his battlefield is always the same.

“Again, the struggle is the other way about. A wife is naturally inclined to refuse what she ought; a mistress is ready to give what she ought not.

“You who wish to marry (and who will do it), have you ever duly meditated on the Civil Code? I have never soiled my feet in that cave of commentary, that cockloft of gabble called the Law Schools; I never looked into the Code, but I see how it works in the living organism of the world. I am a lawyer, as a clinical professor is a doctor. The malady is not in books, it is in the patient.—The Code, my friend, provides women with guardians, treats them as minors, as children. And how do we manage children? By fear. In that word, my dear Paul, you have the bit for the steed.—Feel your pulse, and say: Can you disguise yourself as a tyrant; you who are so gentle, so friendly, so trusting; you whom at first I used to laugh at, and whom I now love well enough to initiate you into my science. Yes, this is part of a science to which the Germans have already given the name of Anthropology.

“Oh! if I had not solved life by means of pleasure, if I had not an excessive antipathy for men who think instead of acting, if I did not despise the idiots who are so stupid as to believe that a book may live, when the sands of African deserts are composed of the ashes of I know not how many unknown Londons, Venices, Parises, and Romes now in dust, I would write a book on modern marriages and the influence of the Christian system; I would erect a beacon on the heap of sharp stones on which the votaries lie who devote themselves to the social multiplicamini. And yet—is the human race worth a quarter of an hour of my time? Is not the sole rational use of pen and ink to ensnare hearts by writing love letters?

“So you will introduce us to the Comtesse de Manerville?”

“Perhaps,” said Paul.

“We shall still be friends?” said de Marsay.

“Sure!” replied Paul.

“Be quite easy; we will be very polite to you, as the Maison Rouge were to the English at Fontenoy.”

Though this conversation shook him, the Comte de Manerville set to work to carry out his plans, and returned to Bordeaux for the winter of 1821. The cost at which he restored and furnished his house did credit to the reputation for elegance that had preceded him. His old connections secured him an introduction to the Royalist circle of Bordeaux, to which, indeed, he belonged, alike by opinion, name, and fortune, and he soon became the leader of its fashion. His knowledge of life, good manners, and Parisian training enchanted the Faubourg Saint-Germain of Bordeaux. An old marquise applied to him an expression formerly current at Court to designate the flower of handsome youth, of the dandies of a past day, whose speech and style were law; she called him la fleur des pois—as who should say Pease-blossom. The Liberal faction took up the nickname, which they used in irony, and the Royalists as a compliment.

Paul de Manerville fulfilled with glory the requirements of the name. He was in the position of many a second actor; as soon as the public vouchsafes some approval, they become almost good. Paul, quite at his ease, displayed the qualities of his defects. His banter was neither harsh nor bitter, his manners were not haughty; in his conversation with women, he expressed the respect they value without too much deference or too much familiarity. His dandyism was no more than an engaging care for his person; he was considerate of rank; he allowed a freedom to younger men which his Paris experience kept within due limits—though a master with the sword and pistol, he was liked for his feminine gentleness.

Then his medium height, and a figure not lean but not yet rotund—two obstacles to personal elegance—did not hinder his playing the part of a Bordelais Brummel. A fair skin, with a healthy color, fine hands, neat feet, blue eyes with good eyelashes, black hair, an easy grace, and a chest-voice always pleasantly modulated and full of feeling—all combined to justify his nickname. Paul was in all things the delicate flower which needs careful culture, its best qualities unfolding only in a moist and propitious soil, which cannot thrive under rough treatment, while a fierce sun burns it and a frost kills it. He was one of those men who are made to accept rather than give happiness, to whom woman is a great factor in life, who need understanding and encouraging, and to whom a wife’s love should play the part of Providence.

Though such a character as this gives rise to trouble in domestic life, it is charming and attractive in society. Paul was a success in the narrow provincial circle, where his character, in no respect strongly marked, was better appreciated than in Paris.

The decoration of his town-house, and the necessary restoration of the château of Lanstrac, which he fitted up with English comfort and luxury, absorbed the capital his agent had saved during the past six years. Reduced, therefore, to his exact income of forty odd thousand francs in stocks, he thought it wise to arrange his housekeeping so as to spend no more than this. By the time he had duly displayed his carriages and horses, and entertained the young men of position in the town, he perceived that provincial life necessitated marriage. Still too young to devote himself to the avaricious cares or speculative improvements in which provincial folk ultimately find employment, as required by the need for providing for their children, he ere long felt the want of the various amusements which become the vital habit of a Parisian.

At the same time, it was not a name to be perpetuated, an heir to whom to transmit his possessions, the position to be gained by having a house where the principal families of the neighborhood might meet, nor weariness of illicit connections, that proved to be the determining cause. He had on arriving fallen in love with the queen of Bordeaux society, the much-talked-of Mademoiselle Evangelista.

Early in the century a rich Spaniard named Evangelista had settled at Bordeaux, where good introductions, added to a fine fortune, had won him a footing in the drawing-rooms of the nobility. His wife had done much to preserve him in good odor amid this aristocracy, which would not, perhaps, have been so ready to receive him but that it could thus annoy the society next below it. Madame Evangelista, descended from the illustrious house of Casa-Real, connected with the Spanish monarchs, was a Creole, and, like all women accustomed to be served by slaves, she was a very fine lady, knew nothing of the value of money, and indulged even her most extravagant fancies, finding them always supplied by a husband who was in love with her, and who was so generous as to conceal from her all the machinery of moneymaking. The Spaniard, delighted to find that she could be happy at Bordeaux, where his business required him to reside, bought a fine house, kept it in good style, entertained splendidly, and showed excellent taste in every respect. So, from 1800 till 1812, no one was talked of in Bordeaux but Monsieur and Madame Evangelista.

The Spaniard died in 1813, leaving a widow of two-and-thirty with an enormous fortune and the prettiest little daughter in the world, at that time eleven years old, promising to become, as indeed she became, a very accomplished person. Clever as Madame Evangelista might be, the Restoration altered her position; the Royalist party sifted itself, and several families left Bordeaux. Still, though her husband’s head and hand were lacking to the management of the business, for which she showed the inaptitude of a woman of fashion and the indifference of the Creole, she made no change in her mode of living.

By the time when Paul de Manerville had made up his mind to return to his native place, Mademoiselle Natalie Evangelista was a remarkably beautiful girl, and apparently the richest match in Bordeaux, where no one knew of the gradual diminution of her mother’s wealth; for, to prolong her reign, Madame Evangelista had spent vast sums of money. Splendid entertainments and almost royal display had kept up the public belief in the wealth of the house.

Natalie was nearly nineteen, no offer of marriage had as yet come to her mother’s ear. Accustomed to indulge all her girlish fancies, Mademoiselle Evangelista had Indian shawls and jewels, and lived amid such luxury as frightened the speculative, in a land and at a time when the young are as calculating as their parents. The fatal verdict, “Only a prince could afford to marry Mademoiselle Evangelista,” was a watchword in every drawing-room and boudoir. Mothers of families, dowagers with granddaughters to marry, and damsels jealous of the fair Natalie, whose unfailing elegance and tyrannous beauty were an annoyance to them, took care to add venom to this opinion by perfidious insinuations. When an eligible youth was heard to exclaim with rapturous admiration on Natalie’s arrival at a ball—“Good Heavens, what a beautiful creature!”—“Yes,” the mammas would reply, “but very expensive!” If some newcomer spoke of Mademoiselle Evangelista as charming, and opined that a man wanting a wife could not make a better choice—“Who would be bold enough,” someone would ask, “to marry a girl to whom her mother allows a thousand francs a month for dress, who keeps horses and a lady’s maid, and wears lace? She has Mechlin lace on her dressing-gowns. What she pays for washing would keep a clerk in comfort. She has morning capes that cost six francs apiece to clean!”

Such speeches as these, constantly repeated by way of eulogium, extinguished the keenest desire a youth might feel to wed Mademoiselle Evangelista. The queen of every ball, surfeited with flattery, sure of smiles and admiration wherever she went, Natalie knew nothing of life. She lived as birds fly, as flowers bloom, finding everyone about her ready to fulfil her least wish. She knew nothing of the price of things, nor of how money is acquired or kept. She very likely supposed that every house was furnished with cooks and coachmen, maids and menservants, just as a field produces fodder and trees yield fruit. To her the beggar, the pauper, the fallen tree, and the barren field were all the same thing. Cherished like a hope by her mother, fatigue never marred her pleasure; she pranced through the world like a courser on the Steppe, a courser without either bridle or shoes.

Six months after Paul’s arrival the upper circles of the town had brought about a meeting between “Pease-blossom” and the queen of the ballroom. The two flowers looked at each other with apparent coldness, and thought each other charming. Madame Evangelista, as being interested in this not unforeseen meeting, read Paul’s sentiments in his eyes, and said to herself, “He will be my son-in-law”; while Paul said to himself, as he looked at Natalie, “She will be my wife!” The wealth of the Evangelistas, proverbial in Bordeaux, remained in Paul’s memory as a tradition of his boyhood, the most indelible of all such impressions. And so pecuniary suitability was a foregone conclusion, without all the discussion and inquiry, which are as horrible to shy as to proud natures.

When some persons tried to express to Paul the praise which it was impossible to refuse to Natalie’s manner and beauty and wit, always ending with some of the bitterly mercenary reflections as to the future to which the expensive style of the household naturally gave rise, Pease-blossom replied with the disdain that such provincialism deserves. And this way of treating the matter, which soon became known, silenced these remarks; for it was Paul who set the ton in ideas and speech as much as in manners and appearance. He had imported the French development of the British stamp and its icebound barriers, its Byronic irony, discontent with life, contempt for sacred bonds, English plate and English wit, the scorn of old provincial customs and old property; cigars, patent leather, the pony, lemon-colored gloves, and the canter. So that befell Paul which had happened to no one before—no old dowager or young maid tried to discourage him.

Madame Evangelista began by inviting him to several grand dinners. Could Pease-blossom remain absent from the entertainments to which the most fashionable young men of the town were bidden? In spite of Paul’s affected coldness, which did not deceive either the mother or the daughter, he found himself taking the first steps on the road to marriage. When Manerville passed in his tilbury, or riding a good horse, other young men would stop to watch him, and he could hear their comments: “There is a lucky fellow; he is rich, he is handsome, and they say he is to marry Mademoiselle Evangelista. There are some people for whom the world seems to have been made!” If he happened to meet Madame Evangelista’s carriage, he was proud of the peculiar graciousness with which the mother and daughter bowed to him.

Even if Paul had not been in love with Mademoiselle Natalie, the world would have married them whether or no. The world, which is the cause of no good thing, is implicated in many disasters; then, when it sees the evil hatching out that it has so maternally brooded, it denies it and avenges it. The upper society of Bordeaux, supposing Mademoiselle Evangelista to have a fortune of a million francs, handed her over to Paul without awaiting the consent of the parties concerned—as it often does. Their fortunes, like themselves, were admirably matched. Paul was accustomed to the luxury and elegance in which Natalie lived. He had arranged and decorated his house as no one else could have arranged a home for Natalie. None but a man accustomed to the expenses of Paris life and the caprices’ of Paris women could escape the pecuniary difficulties which might result from marrying a girl who was already quite as much a Creole and a fine lady as her mother. Where a Bordelais in love with Mademoiselle Evangelista would be ruined, the Comte de Manerville, said the world, would steer clear of disaster.

So the affair was settled; the magnates of the tiptop royalist circle, when the marriage was mentioned in their presence, made such civil speeches to Paul as flattered his vanity.

“Everyone says you are to marry Mademoiselle Evangelista. You will do well to marry her; you will not find so handsome a wife anywhere, not even in Paris; she is elegant, pleasing, and allied through her mother with the Casa-Reals. You will be the most charming couple; you have the same tastes, the same views of life, and will keep the most agreeable house in Bordeaux. Your wife will only have to pack up her clothes and move in. In a case like yours a house ready to live in is as good as a settlement. And you are lucky to meet with a mother-in-law like Madame Evangelista. She is a clever woman, very attractive, and will be an important aid to you in the political career you ought now to aspire to. And she has sacrificed everything for her daughter, whom she worships, and Natalie will no doubt be a good wife, for she is loving to her mother.—And then, everything must have an end.”

“That is all very fine,” was Paul’s reply; for, in love though he was, he wished to be free to choose, “but it must have a happy end.”

Paul soon became a frequent visitor to Madame Evangelista, led there by the need to find employment for his idle hours, which he, more than other men, found it difficult to fill. There only in the town did he find the magnificence and luxury to which he had accustomed himself.

Madame Evangelista, at the age of forty, was handsome still, with the beauty of a grand sunset, which in summer crowns the close of a cloudless day. Her blameless reputation was an endless subject of discussion in the “sets” of Bordeaux society, and the curiosity of women was all the more alert, because the widow’s appearance suggested the sort of temperament which makes Spanish and Creole women notorious. She had black eyes and hair, the foot and figure of a Spaniard—the slender serpentine figure for which the Spaniards have a name. Her face, still beautiful, had the fascinating Creole complexion, which can only be described by comparing it with white muslin over warm blood-color, so equably tinted is its fairness. Her form was round, and attractive for the grace which combines the ease of indolence with vivacity, strength with extreme freedom. She was attractive, but imposing; she fascinated, but made no promises. Being tall, she could at will assume the port and dignity of a queen.

Men were ensnared by her conversation, as birds are by birdlime, for she had by nature the spirit which necessity bestows on intriguers; she would go on from concession to concession, arming herself with what she gained to ask for something more, but always able to withdraw a thousand yards at a bound if she were asked for anything in return. She was ignorant of facts, but she had known the Courts of Spain and of Naples, the most famous persons of the two Americas, and various illustrious families of England and of the Continent, which gave her an amount of information superficially so wide that it seemed immense. She entertained with the taste and dignity that cannot be learned, though to certain refined minds they become a second nature, assimilating the best of everything wherever they find it. Though her reputation for virtue remained unexplained, it served the purpose of giving weight to her actions, speech, and character.

The mother and daughter were truly friends, apart from filial and maternal feeling. They suited each other, and their perpetual contact had never resulted in a jar. Thus many persons accounted for Madame Evangelista’s self-sacrifice by her love for her daughter. However, though Natalie may have consoled her mother for her unalleviated widowhood, she was not perhaps its only motive. Madame Evangelista was said to have fallen in love with a man whom the second Restoration had reinstated in his title and peerage. This man, who would willingly have married her in 1814, had very decently thrown her over in 1816.

Now Madame Evangelista, apparently the best-hearted creature living, had in her nature one terrible quality which can be best expressed in Catherine de’ Medici’s motto, Odiate e aspettate—Hate and wait. Used always to be first, always to be obeyed, she resembled royal personages in being amiable, gentle, perfectly sweet and easygoing in daily life; but terrible, implacable, when offended in her pride as a woman, a Spaniard, and a Casa-Real. She never forgave. This woman believed in the power of her own hatred; she regarded it as an evil spell which hung over her enemies. This fateful influence she had cast over the man who had been false to her. Events which seemed to prove the efficacy of her jettatura confirmed her in her superstitious belief in it. Though he was a minister and a member of the Upper Chamber, ruin stole upon him, and he was utterly undone. His estate, his political and personal position—all was lost. One day Madame Evangelista was able to drive past him in her handsome carriage while he stood in the Champs-Élysées, and to blight him with a look sparkling with the fires of triumph.

This misadventure, occupying her mind for two years, had hindered her marrying again; and afterwards her pride constantly suggested comparisons between those who offered themselves and the husband who had loved her so truly and generously. And thus, from disappointment to hesitancy, from hope to disenchantment, she had come to an age when women have no part to fill in life but that of a mother, devoting themselves to their daughters, and transferring all their interests from themselves to the members of another household, the last investment of human affection.

Madame Evangelista quickly read Paul’s character and concealed her own. He was the very man she hoped for as a son-in-law, as the responsible editor of her influence and authority. He was related through his mother to the Maulincours; and the old Baronne de Maulincour, the friend of the Vidame de Panders, lived in the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The grandson of the Baronne, Auguste de Maulincour, had a brilliant position in society. Thus Paul would advantageously introduce the Evangelistas to the World of Paris. The widow had at rare intervals visited Paris under the Empire; she longed to shine in Paris under the Restoration. There only were the elements to be found of political success, the only form of fortune-making in which a woman of fashion can allow herself to cooperate.

Madame Evangelista, obliged by her husband’s business to live in Bordeaux, had never liked it; she had a house there, and everyone knows how many obligations fetter a woman’s life under such circumstances; but she was tired of Bordeaux, she had exhausted its resources. She wished for a wider stage, as gamblers go where the play is highest. So, for her own benefit, she dreamed of high destinies for Paul. She intended to use her own cleverness and knowledge of life for her son-in-law’s advancement, so as to enjoy the pleasures of power in his name. Many men are thus the screen of covert feminine ambitions. And, indeed, Madame Evangelista had more than one motive for wishing to govern her daughter’s husband.

Paul was, of course, captivated by the lady, all the more certainly because she seemed not to wish to influence him in any way. She used her ascendency to magnify herself, to magnify her daughter, and to give enhanced value to everything about her, so as to have the upper hand from the first with the man in whom she saw the means of continuing her aristocratic connection.

And Paul valued himself the more highly for this appreciation of the mother and daughter. He fancied himself wittier than he was, when he found that his remarks and his slightest jests were responded to by Mademoiselle Evangelista, who smiled or looked up intelligently, and by her mother, whose flattery always seemed to be involuntary. The two women were so frankly kind, he felt so sure of pleasing them, they drove him so cleverly by the guiding thread of his conceit, that, before long, he spent most of his time at their house.

Within a year of his arrival Count Paul, without having declared his intentions, was so attentive to Natalie, that he was universally understood to be courting her. Neither mother nor daughter seemed to think of marriage. Mademoiselle Evangelista did not depart from the reserve of a fine lady who knows how to be charming and converse agreeably without allowing the slightest advance towards intimacy. This self-respect, rare among provincial folks, attracted Paul greatly. Shy men are often touchy, unexpected suggestions alarm them. They flee even from happiness if it comes with much display, and are ready to accept unhappiness if it comes in a modest form, surrounded by gentle shades. Hence Paul, seeing that Madame Evangelista made no effort to entrap him, ensnared himself. The Spanish lady captivated him finally one evening by saying that at a certain age a superior woman, like a man, found that ambition took the place of the feelings of earlier years.

“That woman,” thought Paul, as he went away, “would be capable of getting me some good embassy before I could even be elected deputy.”

The man who, under any circumstances, fails to look at everything or at every idea from all sides, to examine them under all aspects, is inefficient and weak, and consequently in danger. Paul at this moment was an optimist; he saw advantages in every contingency, and never remembered that an ambitious mother-in-law may become a tyrant. So every evening as he went home he pictured himself as married, he bewitched himself, and unconsciously shod himself with the slippers of matrimony. He had enjoyed his liberty too long to regret it; he was tired of single life, which could show him nothing new, and of which he now saw only the discomforts; whereas, though the difficulties of marriage sometimes occurred to him, he far more often contemplated its pleasures; the prospect was new to him.

“Married life,” said he to himself, “is hard only on the poorer classes. Half its troubles vanish before wealth.”

So every day some hopeful suggestion added to the list of advantages which he saw in this union.

“However high I may rise in life, Natalie will always be equal to her position,” he would say to himself, “and that is no small merit in a wife. How many men of the Empire have I seen suffering torment from their wives! Is it not an important element of happiness never to feel one’s pride or vanity rubbed the wrong way by the companion one has chosen? A man can never be utterly wretched with a well-bred woman; she never makes him contemptible, and she may be of use. Natalie will be a perfect mistress of a drawing-room.”

Then he fell back on his recollections of the most distinguished women of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to convince himself that Natalie could at least meet them on a footing of perfect equality, if not eclipse them. Every comparison was to Natalie’s advantage. The terms of the comparisons indeed, derived from his imagination, yielded to his wishes. In Paris some new figure would each day have crossed his path, girls of different styles of beauty, and the variety of such impressions would have given balance to his mind; but at Bordeaux Natalie had no rival, she was the single flower, and had blossomed very cleverly at the juncture when Paul was under the tyranny of an idea to which most men fall victims. These conditions of propinquity, added to the reasoning of his vanity and a genuine affection, which could find no issue but in marriage, led Paul on to an increasing passion, of which he was wise enough to keep the secret to himself, construing it as a wish simply to get married.

He even endeavored to study Mademoiselle Evangelista in a way that would not compromise his ultimate decision in his own eyes, for his friend de Marsay’s terrible speech rang in his ears now and again. But, in the first place, those who are accustomed to luxury have a tone of simplicity that is very deceptive. They scorn it, they use it habitually, it is the means and not the object of their lives. Paul, as he saw that these ladies’ lives were so similar to his own, never for an instant imagined that they concealed any conceivable source of ruin. And then, though there are a few general rules for mitigating the worries of married life, there are none to enable us to guess or foresee them.

When troubles arise between two beings who have undertaken to make life happy and easy each for the other, they are based on the friction produced by an incessant intimacy which does not arise between two persons before marriage, and never can arise till the laws and habits of French life are changed. Two beings on the eve of joining their lives always deceive each other; but the deception is innocent and involuntary. Each, of course, stands in the best light; they are rivals as to which makes the most promising show, and at that time form a favorable idea of themselves which they cannot afterwards come up to. Real life, like a changeable day, consists more often of the gray, dull hours when Nature is overcast than of the brilliant intervals when the sun gives glory and joy to the fields. Young people look only at the fine days. Subsequently they ascribe the inevitable troubles of life to matrimony, for there is in man a tendency to seek the cause of his griefs in things or persons immediately at hand.

To discover in Mademoiselle Evangelista’s demeanor or countenance, in her words or her gestures, any indication that might reveal the quota of imperfection inherent in her character, Paul would have needed not merely the science of Lavater and of Gall, but another kind of knowledge for which no code of formulas exists, the personal intuition of the observer, which requires almost universal knowledge. Like all girls, Natalie’s countenance was impenetrable. The deep, serene peace given by sculptors to the virgin heads intended to personify Justice, Innocence, all the divinities who dwell above earthly agitations—this perfect calm is the greatest charm of a girlish face, it is the sign-manual of her purity; nothing has stirred her, no repressed passion, no betrayed affection has cast a shade on the placidity of her features; and if it is assumed, the girl has ceased to exist. Living always inseparable from her mother, Natalie, like every Spanish woman, had had none but religious teaching, and some few lessons of a mother to her daughter which might be useful for her part in life. Hence her calm expression was natural; but it was a veil, in which the woman was shrouded as a butterfly is in the chrysalis.

At the same time, a man skilled in the use of the scalpel of analysis might have discerned in Natalie some revelation of the difficulties her character might present in the conflict of married or social life. Her really wonderful beauty was marked by excessive regularity of features, in perfect harmony with the proportions of her head and figure. Such perfection does not promise well for the intellect, and there are few exceptions to this rule. Superior qualities show in some slight imperfections of form which become exquisitely attractive, points of light where antagonistic feelings sparkle and rivet the eye. Perfect harmony indicates the coldness of a compound nature.

Natalie had a round figure, a sign of strength, but also an infallible evidence of self-will often reaching the pitch of obstinacy in women whose mind is neither keen nor broad. Her hands, like those of a Greek statue, confirmed the forecast of her face and form by showing a love of unreasoning dominion—Will for will’s sake. Her brows met in the middle, which, according to observers, indicates a disposition to jealousy. The jealousy of noble souls becomes emulation and leads to great things; that of mean minds turns to hatred. Her mother’s motto, Odiate e aspettate, was hers in all its strength. Her eyes looked black, but were in fact dark hazel-brown, and contrasted with her hair of that russet hue, so highly prized by the Romans, and known in English as auburn, the usual color of the hair in the children of two black-haired parents like Monsieur and Madame Evangelista. Her delicately white skin added infinitely to the charm of this contrast of colors in her hair and eyes, but this refinement was purely superficial; for whenever the lines of a face have not a peculiar soft roundness, whatever the refinement and delicacy of the details, do not look for any especial charms of mind. These flowers of delusive youth presently fade, and you are surprised after the lapse of a few years to detect hardness, sternness, where you once admired the elegance of lofty qualities.

There was something august in Natalie’s features; still, her chin was rather heavy—a painter would have said thick in impasto, an expression descriptive of a type that shows preexisting sentiments of which the violence does not declare itself till middle life. Her mouth, a little sunk in her face, showed the arrogance no less expressed in her hand, her chin, her eyebrows, and her stately shape. Finally, a last sign which alone might have warned the judgment of a connoisseur, Natalie’s pure and fascinating voice had a metallic ring. However gently the brazen instrument was handled, however tenderly the vibrations were sent through the curves of the horn, that voice proclaimed a nature like that of the Duke of Alva, from whom the Casa-Reals were collaterally descended. All these indications pointed to passions, violent but not tender, to sudden infatuations, irreconcilable hatred, a certain wit without intellect, and the craving to rule, inherent in persons who feel themselves below their pretensions.

These faults, the outcome of race and constitution, sometimes compensated for by the impulsions of generous blood, were hidden in Natalie as ore is hidden in the mine, and would only be brought to the surface by the rough treatment and shocks to which character is subjected in the world. At present the sweetness and freshness of youth, the elegance of her manners, her saintly ignorance, and the grace of girlhood, tinged her features with the delicate veneer that always must deceive superficial observers. Then her mother had given her the habit of agreeable talk which lends a tone of superiority, replies to argument by banter, and has a fascinating flow under which a woman hides the tufa of a shallow mind, as nature hides a barren soil under a luxuriant growth of ephemeral plants. And Natalie had the charm of spoilt children who have known no griefs; her frankness was seductive, she had not the prim manners which mothers impress on their daughters by laying down a code of absurd reserve and speech when they wish to get them married. She was sincere and gay, as a girl is, who, knowing nothing of marriage, expects happiness only, foresees no disaster, and believes that as a wife she will acquire the right of always having her own way.

How should Paul, who loved as a man does when love is seconded by desire, foresee in a girl of this temper, whose beauty dazzled him, the woman as she would be at thirty, when shrewder observers might have been deceived by appearances? If happiness were difficult to find in married life, with this girl it would not be impossible. Some fine qualities shone through her defects. In the hand of a skilful master any good quality may be made to stifle faults, especially in a girl who can love.

But to make so stern a metal ductile, the iron fist of which de Marsay had spoken was needed. The Paris dandy was right. Fear, inspired by love, is an infallible tool for dealing with a woman’s spirit. Those who fear, love; and fear is more nearly akin to love than to hatred.—Would Paul have the coolness, the judgment, the firmness needed in the contest of which no wife should be allowed to have a suspicion? And again, did Natalie love Paul?

Natalie, like most girls, mistook for love the first impulses of instinct and liking that Paul’s appearance stirred in her, knowing nothing of the meaning of marriage or of housewifery. To her the Comte de Manerville, who had seen diplomatic service at every court in Europe, one of the most fashionable men of Paris, could not be an ordinary man devoid of moral strength, with a mixture of bravery and shyness, energetic perhaps in adversity, but defenceless against the foes that poison happiness. Would she develop tact enough to discern Paul’s good qualities among his superficial defects? Would she not magnify these and forget those, after the manner of young wives who know nothing of life?

At a certain age a woman will overlook vice in the man who spares her petty annoyances, while she regards such annoyances as misfortunes. What conciliatory influence and what experience would cement and enlighten this young couple? Would not Paul and his wife imagine that love was all in all, when they were only at the stage of affectionate grimacing in which young wives indulge at the beginning of their life, and of the compliments a husband pays on their return from a ball while he still has the courtesy of admiration?

In such a situation would not Paul succumb to his wife’s tyranny instead of asserting his authority? Would he be able to say “No”? All was danger for a weak man in circumstances where a strong one might perhaps have run some risk.

The subject of this study is not the transition of an unmarried to a married man—a picture which, broadly treated, would not lack the interest which the inmost storm of our feelings must lend to the commonest facts of life. The events and ideas which culminated in Paul’s marriage to Mademoiselle Evangelista are an introduction to the work, and only intended as a study to the great comedy which is the prologue to every married life. Hitherto this passage has been neglected by dramatic writers, though it offers fresh resources to their wit.

This prologue, which decided Paul’s future life, and to which Madame Evangelista looked forward with terror, was the discussion to which the marriage settlements give rise in every family, whether of the nobility or of the middle class; for human passions are quite as strongly agitated by small interests as by great ones. These dramas, played out in the presence of the notary, are all more or less like this one, and its real interest will be less in these pages than in the memory of most married people.

Early in the winter of 1822 Paul de Manerville, through the intervention of his grandaunt, Madame la Baronne de Maulincour, asked the hand of Mademoiselle Evangelista. Though the Baroness usually spent no more than two months in Médoc, she remained on this occasion till the end of October to be of use to her grandnephew in this matter, and play the part of a mother. After laying the overtures before Madame Evangelista, the experienced old lady came to report to Paul on the results of this step.

“My boy,” said she, “I have settled the matter. In discussing money matters I discovered that Madame Evangelista gives her daughter nothing. Mademoiselle Natalie marries with but her barest right.—Marry, my dear; men who have a name and estates to transmit must sooner or later end by marriage. I should like to see my dear Auguste do the same.

“You can get married without me, I have nothing to bestow on you but my blessing, and old women of my age have no business at weddings. I shall return to Paris tomorrow. When you introduce your wife to society, I shall see her much more comfortably than I can here.—If you had not your house in Paris, you would have found a home with me. I should have been delighted to arrange my second-floor rooms to suit you.”

“Dear aunt,” said Paul, “thank you very warmly. … But what do you mean by saying her mother gives her nothing, ana that she marries only with her bare rights?”

“Her mother, my dear boy, is a very knowing hand, who is taking advantage of the girl’s beauty to make terms and give you no more than what she cannot keep back—the father’s fortune. We old folks, you know, think a great deal of ‘How much has he? How much has she?’ I advise you to give strict instructions to your notary. The marriage contract, my child, is a sacred duty. If your father and mother had not made their bed well, you might now be without sheets.—You will have children—they are the usual result of marriage—so you are bound to think of this. Call in Maître Mathias, our old notary.”

Madame de Maulincour left Paul plunged in perplexity.—His mother-in-law was a knowing hand! He must discuss and defend his interests in the marriage contract!—Who, then, proposed to attack them? So he took his aunt’s advice and entrusted the matter of settlements to Maître Mathias.

Still, he could not help thinking of the anticipated discussion. And it was not without much trepidation that he went to see Madame Evangelista with a view to announcing his intentions. Like all timid people, he was afraid lest he should betray the distrust suggested by his aunt, which he thought nothing less than insulting. To avoid the slightest friction with so imposing a personage as his future stepmother seemed to him, he fell back on the circumlocutions natural to those who dare not face a difficulty.

“Madame, you know what an old family notary is like,” said he, when Natalie was absent for a minute. “Mine is a worthy old man, who would be deeply aggrieved if I did not place my marriage contract in his hands—”

“But, my dear fellow,” said Madame Evangelista, interrupting him, “are not marriage contracts always settled through the notaries on each side?”

During the interval while Paul sat pondering, not daring to open the matter, Madame Evangelista had been wondering, “What is he thinking about?” for women have a great power of reading thought from the play of feature. And she could guess at the great-aunt’s hints from the embarrassed gaze and agitated tone which betrayed Paul’s mental disturbance.

At last, thought she, the decisive moment has come; the crisis is at hand; what will be the end of it?—“My notary,” she went on, after a pause, “is Maître Solonet, and yours is Maître Mathias; I will ask them both to dinner tomorrow, and they can settle the matter between them. Is it not their business to conciliate our interests without our meddling, as it is that of the cook to feed us well?”

“Why, of course,” said he, with a little sigh of relief.

By a strange inversion of parts, Paul, who was blameless, quaked, while Madame Evangelista, though dreadfully anxious, appeared calm. The widow owed her daughter the third of the fortune left by Monsieur Evangelista, twelve hundred thousand francs, and was quite unable to pay it, even if she stripped herself of all her possessions. She would be at her son-in-law’s mercy. Though she might override Paul alone, would Paul, enlightened by his lawyer, agree to any compromise as to the account of her stewardship? If he withdrew, all Bordeaux would know the reason, and it would be impossible for Natalie to marry. The mother who wished to secure her daughter’s happiness, the woman who from the hour of her birth had lived in honor, foresaw the day when she must be dishonest.

Like those great generals who would fain wipe out of their lives the moment when they were cowards at heart, she wished she could score out that day from the days of her life. And certainly some of her hairs turned white in the course of the night when, face to face with this difficulty, she bitterly blamed herself for her want of care.

In the first place, she was obliged to confide in her lawyer, whom she sent for to attend her as soon as she was up. She had to confess a secret vexation which she had never admitted even to herself, for she had walked on to the verge of the precipice, trusting to one of those chances that never happen. And a feeling was born in her soul, a little animus against Paul that was not yet hatred, nor aversion, nor in any way evil—but, was not he the antagonistic party in this family suit? Was he not, unwittingly, an innocent enemy who must be defeated? And who could ever love anyone he had duped?

Compelled to deceive, the Spanish woman resolved, like any woman, to show her superiority in a contest of which the entire success could alone wipe out the discredit. In the silence of the night she excused herself by a line of argument, in which her pride had the upper hand. Had not Natalie benefited by her lavishness? Had her conduct ever been actuated by one of the base and ignoble motives that degrade the soul? She could not keep accounts—well, was that a sin, a crime? Was not a man only too lucky to win such a wife as Natalie? Was not the treasure she had preserved for him worth a discharge in full? Did not many a man pay for the woman he loved by making great sacrifices? And why should he do more for a courtesan than for a wife?—Besides, Paul was a commonplace, incapable being; she would support him by the resources of her own cleverness; she would help him to make his way in the world; he would owe his position to her; would not this amply pay the debt? He would be a fool to hesitate! And for a few thousand francs more or less? It would be disgraceful!

“If I am not at once successful,” said she to herself, “I leave Bordeaux. I can still secure a good match for Natalie by realizing all that is left—the house, my diamonds, and the furniture, giving her all but an annuity for myself.”

When a strongly tempered spirit plans a retreat, as Richelieu did at Brouage, and schemes for a splendid finale, this alternative becomes a fulcrum which helps the schemer to triumph. This escape, in case of failure, reassured Madame Evangelista, who went to sleep indeed, full of confidence in her second in this duel. She trusted greatly to the aid of the cleverest notary in Bordeaux, Maître Solonet, a young man of seven-and-twenty, a member of the Legion of Honor as the reward of having contributed actively to the restoration of the Bourbons. Proud and delighted to be admitted to an acquaintance with Madame Evangelista, less as a lawyer than as belonging to the Royalist party in Bordeaux, Solonet cherished for her sunset beauty one of those passions which such women as Madame Evangelista ignore while they are flattered by them, and which even the prudish allow to float in their wake. Solonet lived in an attitude of vanity full of respect and seemly attentions. This young man arrived next morning with the zeal of a slave, and was admitted to the widow’s bedroom, where he found her coquettishly dressed in a becoming wrapper.

“Now,” said she, “can I trust to your reticence and entire devotion in the discussion which is to take place this evening? Of course, you can guess that my daughter’s marriage contract is in question.”

The young lawyer was profuse in protestations.

“For the facts, then,” said she.

“I am all attention,” he replied, with a look of concentration.

Madame Evangelista stated the case without any finessing.

“My dear madame, all this matters not,” said Maître Solonet, assuming an important air when his client had laid the exact figures before him. “How have you dealt with Monsieur de Manerville? The moral attitude is of greater consequence than any questions of law or finance.”

Madame Evangelista robed herself in dignity; the young notary was delighted to learn that to this day his client, in her treatment of Paul, had preserved the strictest distance; half out of real pride, and half out of unconscious self-interest, she had always behaved to the Comte de Manerville as though he were her inferior, and it would be an honor for him to marry Mademoiselle Evangelista. Neither she nor her daughter could be suspected of interested motives; their feelings were evidently free from meanness; if Paul should raise the least difficulty on the money question, they had every right to withdraw to an immeasurable distance—in fact, she had a complete ascendency over her would-be son-in-law.

“This being the case,” said Solonet, “what is the utmost concession you are inclined to make?”

“The least possible,” said she, laughing.

“A woman’s answer!” replied Solonet. “Madame, do you really wish to see Mademoiselle Natalie married?”

“Yes.”

“And you want a discharge for the eleven hundred and fifty-six thousand francs you will owe her in accordance with the account rendered of your guardianship?”

“Exactly!”

“How much do you wish to reserve?”

“At least thirty thousand francs a year.”

“So we must conquer or perish?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I will consider the ways and means of achieving that end, for we must be very dexterous, and husband our resources. I will give you a few hints on arriving; act on them exactly, and I can confidently predict complete success.—Is Count Paul in love with Mademoiselle Natalie?” he asked as he rose.

“He worships her.”

“That is not enough. Is he so anxious to have her as his wife that he will pass over any little pecuniary difficulties?”

“Yes.”

“That is what I call having personal property in a daughter!” exclaimed the notary. “Make her look her best this evening,” he added, with a cunning twinkle.

“We have a perfect dress for her.”

“The dress for the Contract, in my opinion, is half the settlements,” said Solonet.

This last argument struck Madame Evangelista as so cogent that she insisted on helping her daughter to dress, partly to superintend the toilet, but also to secure her as an innocent accomplice in her financial plot. And her daughter, with her coiffure à la Sévigné, and a white cashmere dress with rose-colored bows, seemed to her handsome enough to assure the victory.

When the maid had left them, and Madame Evangelista was sure that nobody was within hearing, she arranged her daughter’s curls as a preliminary.

“My dear child, are you sincerely attached to Monsieur de Manerville?” said she in a steady voice.

The mother and daughter exchanged a strangely meaning glance.

“Why, my little mother, should you ask today rather than yesterday? Why have you allowed me to imagine a doubt?”

“If it were to part you from me forever, would you marry him all the same?”

“I could give him up without dying of grief.”

“Then you do not love him, my dear,” said the mother, kissing her daughter’s forehead.

“But why, my dear mamma, are you playing the grand inquisitor?”

“I wanted to see if you cared to be married without being madly in love with your husband.”

“I like him.”

“You are right; he is a Count, and, between us, he shall be made peer of France. But there will be difficulties.”

“Difficulties between people who care for each other?—No! Pease-blossom, my dear mother, is too well planted there,” and she pointed to her heart with a pretty gesture, “to make the smallest objection; I am sure of that.”

“But if it were not so?”

“I should utterly forget him.”

“Well said! You are a Casa-Real.—But though he is madly in love with you, if certain matters were discussed which do not immediately concern him, but which he would have to make the best of for your sake and mine, Natalie, heh? If, without proceeding in the least too far, a little graciousness of manner might turn the scale?—A mere nothing, you know, a word? Men are like that—they can resist sound argument and yield to a glance.”

“I understand! A little touch just to make Favorite leap the gate,” said Natalie, with a flourish as if she were whipping a horse.

“My darling, I do not wish you to do anything approaching to invitation. We have traditions of old Castilian pride which will never allow us to go too far. The Count will be informed of my situation.”

“What situation?”

“You would not understand if I told you.—Well, if after seeing you in all your beauty his eyes should betray the slightest hesitancy—and I shall watch him—at that instant I should break the whole thing off; I should turn everything into money, leave Bordeaux, and go to Douai, to the Claës, who, after all, are related to us through the Temnincks. Then I would find a French peer for your husband, even if I had to take refuge in a convent and give you my whole fortune.”

“My dear mother, what can I do to hinder such misfortunes?” said Natalie.

“I never saw you lovelier, my child! Be a little purposely attractive, and all will be well.”

Madame Evangelista left Natalie pensive, and went to achieve a toilet which allowed her to stand a comparison with her daughter. If Natalie was to fascinate Paul, must not she herself fire the enthusiasm of her champion Solonet?

The mother and daughter were armed for conquest when Paul arrived with the bouquet which for some months past had been his daily offering to Natalie. Then they sat chatting while awaiting the lawyers.

This day was to Paul the first skirmish in the long and weary warfare of married life. It is necessary, therefore, to review the forces on either side, to place the belligerents, and to define the field on which they are to do battle.

To second him in a struggle of which he did not in the least appreciate the consequences, Paul had nobody but his old lawyer Mathias. They were each to be surprised unarmed by an unexpected manoeuvre, driven by an enemy whose plans were laid, and compelled to act without having time for reflection. What man but would have failed even with Cujas and Barthole to back him? How should he fear perfidy when everything seemed so simple and natural?

What could Mathias do single-handed against Madame Evangelista, Solonet, and Natalie, especially when his client was a lover who would go over to the enemy as soon as his happiness should seem to be imperiled? Paul was already entangling himself by making the pretty speeches customary with lovers, to which his passion gave an emphasis of immense value in the eyes of Madame Evangelista, who was leading him on to commit himself.

The matrimonial condottieri, who were about to do battle for their clients, and whose personal prowess would prove decisive in this solemn contest—the two notaries—represented the old and the new schools, the old and the new style of notary.

Maître Mathias was a worthy old man of sixty-nine, proud of twenty years’ practice in his office. His broad, gouty feet were shod in shoes with silver buckles, and were an absurd finish to legs so thin, with such prominent knee-bones, that when he crossed his feet they looked like the crossbones on a tombstone. His lean thighs, lost in baggy black knee-breeches with silver buckles, seemed to bend under the weight of a burly stomach and the round shoulders characteristic of men who live in an office! a huge ball, always clothed in a green coat with square-cut skirts, which no one remembered ever to have seen new. His hair, tightly combed back and powdered, was tied in a rat’s tail that always tucked itself away between the collar of his coat and that of his flowered white waistcoat. With his bullet head, his face as red as a vine-leaf, his blue eyes, trumpet-nose, thick lips, and double chin, the dear little man, wherever he went, aroused the laughter so liberally bestowed by the French on the grotesque creations which Nature sometimes allows herself and Art thinks it funny to exaggerate, calling them caricatures.

But in Maître Mathias the mind had triumphed over the body, the qualities of the soul had vanquished the eccentricity of his appearance. Most of the townsfolk treated him with friendly respect and deference full of esteem. The notary’s voice won all hearts by the eloquent ring of honesty. His only cunning consisted in going straight to the point, oversetting every evil thought by the directness of his questions. His sharply observant eye, and his long experience of business, gave him that spirit of divination which allowed him to read consciences and discern the most secret thoughts. Though grave and quiet in business, this patriarch had the cheerfulness of our ancestors. He might, one felt, risk a song at table, accept and keep up family customs, celebrate anniversaries and birthdays, whether of grandparents or children, and bury the Christmas log with due ceremony; he loved to give New Year’s gifts, to invent surprises, and bring out Easter eggs; he believed, no doubt, in the duties of a godfather, and would never neglect any old-time custom that gave color to life of yore.

Maître Mathias Tras a noble and respectable survival of the notaries, obscure men of honor, of whom no receipt was asked for millions, and who returned them in the same bags, tied with the same string; who fulfilled every trust to the letter, drew up inventories for probate with decent feeling, took a paternal interest in their client’s affairs, put a bar sometimes in the way of a spendthrift, and were the depositaries of family secrets; in short, one of those notaries who considered themselves responsible for blunders in their deeds, and who gave time and thought to them. Never, in the whole of his career as a notary, had one of his clients to complain of a bad investment, of a mortgage ill chosen or carelessly managed. His wealth, slowly but honestly acquired, had been accumulated through thirty years of industry and economy. He had found places for fourteen clerks. Religious and generous in secret, Mathias was always to be found where good was to be done without reward. He was an acting member of the Board of Asylums and the Charitable Committee, and the largest subscriber to the voluntary rates for the relief of unexpected disaster, or the establishment of some useful institution. Thus, neither he nor his wife had a carriage; his word was sacred; he had as much money deposited in his cellar as lay at the bank; he was known as “Good Monsieur Mathias”; and when he died, three thousand persons followed him to the grave.

Solonet was the youthful notary who comes in humming a tune, who affects an airy manner, and declares that business may be done quite as efficiently with a laugh as with a serious countenance; the notary who is a captain in the National Guard, who does not like to be known for a lawyer, and aims at the Cross of the Legion of Honor, who keeps his carriage and leaves the correcting of his deeds to his clerks; the notary who goes to balls and to the play, who buys pictures and plays écarté, who has a cash drawer into which he pours deposit-money, repaying in notes what he receives in gold; the notary who keeps pace with the times and risks his capital in doubtful investments, who speculates, hoping to retire with an income of thirty thousand francs after ten years in his office; the notary whose acumen is the outcome of duplicity, and who is feared by many as an accomplice in possession of their secrets; the notary who regards his official position as a means of marrying some bluestocking heiress.

When the fair and elegant Solonet—all curled and scented, booted like a lover of the Vaudeville, and dressed like a dandy whose most important business is a duel—entered the room before his older colleague, who walked slowly from a touch of the gout, the two were the living representatives of one of the caricatures entitled “Then and Now,” which had great success under the Empire.

Though Madame and Mademoiselle Evangelista, to whom “Good Monsieur Mathias” was a stranger, at first felt a slight inclination to laugh, they were at once touched by the perfect grace of his greeting. The worthy man’s speech was full of the amenity that an amiable old man can infuse both into what he says and the manner of saying it.

The younger man, with his frothy sparkle, was at once thrown into the shade. Mathias showed his superior breeding by the measured respect of his address to Paul. Without humiliating his white hairs, he recognized the young man’s rank, while appreciating the fact that certain honors are due to old age, and that all such social rights are interdependent. Solonet’s bow and “How d’ do?” were, on the contrary, the utterance of perfect equality, which could not fail to offend the susceptibilities of a man of the world, and to make himself ridiculous in the eyes of a man of rank.

The young notary, by a somewhat familiar gesture, invited Madame Evangelista to speak with him in a window-recess. For some few moments they spoke in whispers, laughing now and then, no doubt to mislead the others as to the importance of the conversation, in which Maître Solonet communicated the plan of battle to the lady in command.

“And could you really,” said he, in conclusion, “make up your mind to sell your house?”

“Undoubtedly!” said she.

Madame Evangelista did not choose to tell her lawyer her reasons for such heroism, as he thought it, for Solonet’s zeal might have cooled if he had known that his client meant to leave Bordeaux. She had not even said so to Paul, not wishing to alarm him prematurely by the extent of the circumvallations needed for the first outworks of a political position.

After dinner the plenipotentiaries left the lovers with Madame Evangelista, and went into an adjoining room to discuss business. Thus two dramas were being enacted: by the chimney corner in the drawing-room a love scene in which life smiled bright and happy; in the study a serious duologue, in which interest was laid bare, and already played the part it always fills under the most flowery aspects of life.

“My dear sir, the deed will be in your hands; I know what I owe to my senior.” Mathias bowed gravely. “But,” Solonet went on, unfolding a rough draft, of no use whatever, that a clerk had written out, “as we are the weaker party, as we are the spinster, I have drafted the articles to save you the trouble. We propose to marry with all our rights on a footing of possession in common, an unqualified settlement of all estate, real and personal, each on the other in case of decease without issue; or, if issue survive them, a settlement of one-quarter on the surviving parent, and a life-interest in one quarter more. The sum thrown into common stock to be one-quarter of the estate of each contracting party, the survivor to have all furniture and movables without exception and duty free. It is all as plain as day.”

“Ta, ta, ta, ta,” said Mathias, “I do not do business as you would sing a ballad. What have you to show?”

“What on your side?” asked Solonet.

“We have to settle,” said Mathias, “the estate of Lanstrac, producing twenty-three thousand francs a year in rents, to say nothing of produce in kind: Item the farms of le Grassol and le Guadet, each let for three thousand six hundred francs. Item the vineyards of Bellerose, yielding on an average sixteen thousand—together forty-six thousand two hundred francs a year. Item a family mansion at Bordeaux, rated at nine hundred. Item a fine house in Paris, with a forecourt and garden, Rue de la Pépinière, rated at fifteen hundred. These properties, of which I hold the title-deeds, we inherit from our parents, excepting the house in Paris acquired by purchase. We have also to include the furniture of the two houses and of the château of Lanstrac, valued at four hundred and fifty thousand francs. There you have the table, the cloth, and the first course. Now what have you for the second course and the dessert?”

“Our rights and expectations,” said Solonet.

“Specify, my dear sir,” replied Mathias. “What have you to show? Where is the valuation made at Monsieur Evangelista’s death? Show me your valuations, and the investments you hold. Where is your capital—if you have any? Where is your land—if you have land! Show me your guardian’s accounts, and tell us what your mother gives or promises to give you.”

“Is Monsieur le Comte de Manerville in love with Mademoiselle Evangelista?”

“He means to marry her if everything proves suitable,” said the old notary. “I am not a child; this is a matter of business and not of sentiment.”

“The business will fall through if you have no sentiment—and generous sentiment; and this is why,” said Solonet. “We had no valuation made after our husband’s death. Spanish, and a Creole, we knew nothing of French law. And we were too deeply grieved, to think of the petty formalities which absorb colder hearts. It is a matter of public notoriety that the deceased gentleman adored his wife, and that we were plunged in woe. Though we had a probate and a kind of valuation on a general estimate, you may thank the surrogate guardian for that, who called upon us to make a statement and settle a sum on our daughter as best we might just at a time when we were obliged to sell out of the English funds to an enormous amount which we wished to reinvest in Paris at double the interest.”

“Come, do not talk nonsense to me. There are means of checking these amounts. How much did you pay in succession duties? The figure will be enough to verify the amounts. Go to the facts. Tell us plainly how much you had, and what is left. And then, if we are too desperately in love, we shall see.”

“Well, if you are marrying for money, you may make your bow at once. We may lay claim to more than a million francs; but our mother has nothing of it left but this house and furniture and four hundred odd thousand francs, invested in 1817 in five percents, and bringing in forty thousand francs a year.”

“How then do you keep up a style costing a hundred thousand?” cried Mathias in dismay.

“Our daughter has cost us vast sums. Besides, we like display. And, finally, all your jeremiads will not bring back two sous of it.”

“Mademoiselle Natalie might have been very handsomely brought up on the fifty thousand francs a year that belonged to her without rushing into ruin. And if you ate with such an appetite as a girl, what will you not devour as a wife?”

“Let us go then,” said Solonet. “The handsomest girl alive is bound to spend more than she has.”

“I will go and speak two words to my client,” said the older lawyer.

“Go, go,” thought Maître Solonet, “go, old Father Cassandra, and tell your client we have not a farthing.” For in the silence of his private office he had strategically disposed of his masses, formed his arguments in columns, fixed the turning-points of the discussion, and prepared the critical moment when the antagonistic parties, thinking all was lost, would jump at a compromise which would be the triumph of his client.

The flowing dress with pink ribbons, the ringlets à la Sévigné, Natalie’s small foot, her insinuating looks, her slender hand, constantly engaged in rearranging the curls which did not need it—all the tricks of a girl showing off, as a peacock spreads its tail in the sun—had brought Paul to the point at which her mother wished to see him. He was crazy with admiration, as crazy as a schoolboy for a courtesan; his looks, an unfailing thermometer of the mind, marked the frenzy of passion which leads a man to commit a thousand follies.

“Natalie is so beautiful,” he whispered to Madame Evangelista, “that I can understand the madness which drives us to pay for pleasure by death.”

The lady tossed her head.

“A lover’s words!” she replied. “My husband never made me such fine speeches; but he married me penniless, and never in thirteen years gave me an instant’s pain.”

“Is that a hint for me?” said Paul, smiling.

“You know how truly I care for you, dear boy,” said she, pressing his hand. “Besides, do you not think I must love you well to be willing to give you my Natalie?”

“To give me! To give me!” cried the girl, laughing and waving a fan of Indian feathers. “What are you whispering about?”

“I,” said Paul, “was saying how well I love you—since the proprieties forbid my expressing my hopes to you.”

“Why?”

“I am afraid of myself.”

“Oh! you are too clever not to know how to set the gems of flattery. Would you like me to tell you what I think of you?—Well, you seem to me to have more wit than a man in love should show. To be Pease-blossom and at the same time very clever,” said she, looking down, “seems to me an unfair advantage. A man ought to choose between the two. I, too, am afraid.”

“Of what?”

“We will not talk like this.—Do not you think, mother, that there is danger in such a conversation when the contract is not yet signed?”

“But it will be,” said Paul.

“I should very much like to know what Achilles and Nestor are saying to each other,” said Natalie, with a glance of childlike curiosity at the door of the adjoining room.

“They are discussing our children, our death, and I know not what trifles besides,” said Paul. “They are counting out our crown-pieces, to tell us whether we may have five horses in the stable. And they are considering certain deeds of gift, but I have forestalled them there.”

“How?” said Natalie.

“Have I not given you myself wholly and all I have?” said he, looking at the girl, who was handsomer than ever as the blush brought up by her pleasure at this reply mounted to her cheeks.

“Mother, how am I to repay such generosity?”

“My dear child, is not your life before you? If you make him happy every day, is not that a gift of inexhaustible treasures? I had no other furniture.”

“Do you like Lanstrac?” asked Paul.

“How can I fail to like anything that is yours?” said she. “And I should like to see your house.”

“Our house,” said Paul. “You want to see whether I have anticipated your tastes, if you can be happy there? Your mother has made your husband’s task a hard one; you have always been so happy; but when love is infinite, nothing is impossible.”

“Dear children,” said Madame Evangelista, “do you think you can remain in Bordeaux during the early days of your marriage? If you feel bold enough to face the world that knows you, watches you, criticises you—well and good! But if you both have that coyness which dwells in the soul and finds no utterance, we will go to Paris, where the life of a young couple is lost in the torrent. There only can you live like lovers without fear of ridicule.”

“You are right, mother; I had not thought of it. But I shall hardly have time to get the house ready. I will write this evening to de Marsay, a friend on whom I can rely, to hurry on the workmen.”

At the very moment when, like all young men who are accustomed to gratify their wishes without any preliminary reflection, Paul was recklessly pledging himself to the expenses of a residence in Paris, Maître Mathias came into the room and signed to his client to come to speak with him.

“What is it, my good friend?” said Paul, allowing himself to be led aside.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said the worthy man, “the lady has not a sou. My advice is to put off this discussion till another day to give you the opportunity of acting with propriety.”

“Monsieur Paul,” said Natalie, “I also should like a private word with you.”

Though Madame Evangelista’s face was calm, no Jew in the Dark Ages ever suffered greater martyrdom in his cauldron of boiling oil than she is her violet velvet dress. Solonet had pledged himself to the marriage, but she knew not by what means and conditions he meant to succeed, and she endured the most dreadful anguish of alternative courses. She really owed her triumph perhaps to her daughter’s disobedience.

Natalie had put her own interpretation on her mother’s words, for she could not fail to see her uneasiness. When she perceived the effect of her advances, her mind was torn by a thousand contradictory thoughts. Without criticising her mother, she felt half ashamed of this manoeuvring, of which the result was obviously to be some definite advantage. Then she was seized by a very intelligible sort of jealous curiosity. She wanted to ascertain whether Paul loved her well enough to overlook the difficulties her mother had alluded to, and of which the existence was proved by Maître Mathias’ cloudy brow. These feelings prompted her to an impulse of honesty which, in fact, became her well. The blackest perfidy would have been less dangerous than her innocence was.

“Paul,” said she in an undertone, and it was the first time she had addressed him by his name, “if some difficulties of money matters could divide us, understand that I release you from every pledge, and give you leave to ascribe to me all the blame that could arise from such a separation.”

She spoke with such perfect dignity in the expression of her generosity, that Paul believed in her disinterestedness and her ignorance of the fact which the notary had just communicated to him; he pressed the girl’s hand, kissing it like a man to whom love is far dearer than money.

Natalie left the room.

“Bless me! Monsieur le Comte, you are committing great follies,” growled the old notary, rejoining his client.

But Paul stood pensive; he had expected to have an income of about a hundred thousand francs by uniting his fortune and Natalie’s; and however blindly in love a man may be, he does not drop without a pang from a hundred thousand to forty-six thousand francs a year when he marries a woman accustomed to every luxury.

“My daughter is gone,” said Madame Evangelista, advancing with royal dignity to where Paul and the notary were standing. “Can you not tell me what is going on!”

“Madame,” said Mathias, dismayed by Paul’s silence, and forced to break the ice, “an impediment—a delay—”

On this, Maître Solonet came out of the inner room and interrupted his senior with a speech that restored Paul to life. Overwhelmed by the recollection of his own devoted speeches and lover-like attitude, Paul knew not how to withdraw or to modify them; he only longed to fling himself into some yawning gulf.

“There is a way of releasing Madame Evangelista from her debt to her daughter,” said the young lawyer with airy ease. “Madame Evangelista holds securities for forty thousand francs yearly in five percents; the capital will soon be at par, if not higher; we may call it eight hundred thousand francs. This house and garden are worth certainly two hundred thousand. Granting this, madame may, under the marriage contract, transfer the securities and title-deeds to her daughter, reserving only the life-interest, for I cannot suppose that the Count wishes to leave his mother-in-law penniless. Though madame has spent her own fortune, she will thus restore her daughter’s, all but a trifling sum.”

“Women are most unfortunate when they do not understand business,” said Madame Evangelista. “I have securities and title-deeds? What in the world are they?”

Paul was enraptured as he heard this proposal. The old lawyer, seeing the snare spread and his client with one foot already caught in it, stood petrified, saying to himself:

“I believe we are being tricked!”

“If madame takes my advice, she will at least secure peace,” the younger man went on. “If she sacrifices herself, at least she will not be worried by the young people. Who can foresee who will live or die?—Monsieur le Comte will then sign a release for the whole sum due to Mademoiselle Evangelista out of her father’s fortune.”

Mathias could not conceal the wrath that sparkled in his eyes and crimsoned his face. “A sum of?” he asked, trembling with indignation.

“Of one million one hundred and fifty-six thousand francs, according to the deed—”

“Why do you not ask Monsieur le Comte hic et nunc to renounce all claims on his wife’s fortune?” said Mathias. “It would be more straightforward.—Well, Monsieur le Comte de Manerville’s ruin shall not be accomplished under my eyes. I beg to withdraw.”

He went a step towards the door, to show his client that the matter was really serious. But he turned back, and addressing Madame Evangelista, he said:

“Do not suppose, madame, that I imagine you to be in collusion with my colleague in his ideas. I believe you to be an honest woman—a fine lady, who knows nothing of business.”

“Thank you, my dear sir!” retorted Solonet.

“You know that there is no question of offence among lawyers,” said Mathias.—“But at least, madame, let me explain to you the upshot of this bargain. You are still young enough and handsome enough to marry again. Oh, dear me!” he went on, in reply to a gesture of the lady’s, “who can answer for the future?”

“I never thought, monsieur,” said she, “that after seven years of widowhood in the prime of life, and after refusing some splendid offers for my daughter’s sake, I should, at nine-and-thirty, be thought capable of such madness.—If we were not discussing business, I should regard such a speech as an impertinence.”

“Would it not be a greater impertinence to assume that you could not remarry?”

“Can and will are very different words,” said Solonet, with a gallant flourish.

“Well,” said Mathias, “we need not talk about your marrying. You may—and we all hope you will—live for five-and-forty years yet. Now, since you are to retain your life-interest in the income left by Monsieur Evangelista as long as you live, must your children dine with Duke Humphrey?”

“What is the meaning of it all?” said the widow. “Who is Duke Humphrey, and what is life-interest?”

Solonet, a speaker of elegance and taste, began to laugh.

“I will translate,” said the old man: “If your children wish to be prudent, they will think of the future. To think of the future means to save half one’s income, supposing there are no more than two children, who must first have a good education, and then a handsome marriage portion. Thus, your daughter and her husband will be reduced to living on twenty thousand francs a year when they have each been accustomed to spend fifty thousand while unmarried. And even that is nothing. My client will be expected to hand over to his children in due course eleven hundred thousand francs as their share of their mother’s fortune, and he will never have received any of it if his wife should die and madame survive her—which is quite possible. In all conscience, is not this to throw himself into the Gironde, tied hand and foot? You wish to see Mademoiselle Natalie made happy? If she loves her husband—which no lawyer allows himself to doubt—she will share his troubles. Madame, I foresee enough to make her die of grief, for she will be miserably poor. Yes, madame, miserably poor; for it is poverty to those who require a hundred thousand francs a year to be reduced to twenty thousand. If love should lead Monsieur le Comte into extravagance, his wife would reduce him to beggary by claiming her share in the event of any disaster.

“I am arguing for your sake, for theirs, for that of their children—for all parties.”

“The good man has certainly delivered a broadside,” thought Solonet, with a glance at his client, as much as to say, “Come on!”

“There is a way of reconciling all these interests,” replied Madame Evangelista. “I may reserve only such a small allowance as may enable me to go into a convent, and you will become at once possessed of all my property. I will renounce the world if my death to it will secure my daughter’s happiness.”

“Madame,” said the old man, “let us take time for mature consideration of the steps that may smooth away all difficulties.”

“Bless me, my dear sir,” cried Madame Evangelista, who foresaw that by delay she would be lost, “all has been considered. I did not know what marriage meant in France; I am a Spanish Creole. I did not know that before I could see my daughter married, I had to make sure how many days longer God would grant me to live, that my child would be wronged by my living, that I have no business to be alive, or ever to have lived.

“When my husband married me I had nothing but my name and myself. My name alone was to him a treasure by which his wealth paled. What fortune can compare with a great name? My fortune was my beauty, virtue, happy temper, birth, and breeding. Can money buy these gifts? If Natalie’s father could hear this discussion, his magnanimous spirit would be grieved forever, and his happiness would be marred in Paradise. I spent millions of francs, foolishly I daresay, without his ever frowning even. Since his death I have been economical and thrifty by comparison with the life he liked me to lead. Let this end it! Monsieur de Manerville is so dejected that I—”

No words can represent the confusion and excitement produced by this exclamation “end it!” It is enough to say that these four well-bred persons all talked at once.

“In Spain you marry Spanish fashion, as you will; but in France, you marry French fashion—rationally, and as you can,” said Mathias.

“Ah, madame,” Paul began, rousing himself from his stupor, “you are mistaken in my feelings—”

“This is not a question of feelings,” said the old man, anxious to stop his client; “this is business affecting three generations. Was it we who made away with the missing millions—we, who merely ask to clear up the difficulties of which we are innocent?”

“Let us marry without further haggling,” said Solonet.

“Haggling! Haggling! Do you call it haggling to defend the interests of the children and of their father and mother?” cried Mathias.

“Yes,” Paul went on, addressing his mother-in-law, “I deplore the recklessness of my youth, which now hinders my closing this discussion with a word, as much as you deplore your ignorance of business-matters and involuntary extravagance. God be my witness that at this moment I am not thinking of myself; a quiet life at Lanstrac has no terrors for me; but Mademoiselle Natalie would have to give up her tastes and habits. That would alter our whole existence.”

“But where did Evangelista find his millions?” said the widow.

“Monsieur Evangelista was a man of business, he played the great game of commerce, he loaded ships and made considerable sums; we are a landed proprietor, our capital is sunk, and our income more or less fixed,” the old lawyer replied.

“Still, there is a way out of the difficulty,” said Solonet, speaking in a high-pitched key, and silencing the other three by attracting their attention and their eyes.

The young man was like a dexterous coachman who, holding the reins of a four-in-hand, amuses himself by lashing and, at the same time, holding in the team. He spurred their passions and soothed them by turns, making Paul foam in his harness, for to him life and happiness were in the balance; and his client as well, for she did not see her way through the intricacies of the dispute.

“Madame Evangelista may, this very day, hand over the securities in the five percents, and sell this house. Sold in lots, it will fetch three hundred thousand francs. Madame will pay you one hundred and fifty thousand francs. Thus, madame will pay down nine hundred and fifty thousand francs at once. Though this is not all she owes her daughter, can you find many fortunes to match it in France?”

“Well and good,” said Mathias; “but what is madame to live on?” At this question, which implied assent, Solonet said within himself:

“Oh, ho! old fox, so you are caught.”

“Madame?” he said aloud. “Madame will keep the fifty thousand crowns left of the price of the house. That sum, added to the sale of her furniture, can be invested in an annuity, and will give her twenty thousand francs a year. Monsieur le Comte will arrange for her to live with him. Lanstrac is a large place. You have a good house in Paris,” he went on, addressing Paul, “so madame your mother-in-law can live with you wherever you are. A widow who, having no house to keep up, has twenty thousand francs a year, is better off than madame was when she was mistress of all her fortune. Madame Evangelista has no one to care for but her daughter; Monsieur le Comte also stands alone; your heirs are in the distant future, there is no fear of conflicting interests.

“A son-in-law and a mother-in-law under such circumstances always join to form one household. Madame Evangelista will make up for the deficit of capital by paying a quota out of her annuity which will help towards the housekeeping. We know her to be too generous, too large-minded, to live as a charge on her children.

“Thus, you may live happy and united with a hundred thousand francs a year to spend—a sufficient income, surely, Monsieur le Comte, to afford you, in any country, all the comforts of life and the indulgence of your fancies?—And, believe me, young married people often feel the need of a third in the household. Now, I ask you, what third can be more suitable than an affectionate, good mother?”

Paul, as he listened to Solonet, thought he heard the voice of an angel. He looked at Mathias to see if he did not share his admiration for Solonet’s fervid eloquence; for he did not know that, under the assumed enthusiasm of impassioned words, notaries, like attorneys, hide the cold and unremitting alertness of the diplomatist.

“A petty Paradise!” said the old man.

Bewildered by his client’s delight, Mathias sat down on an ottoman, resting his head on one hand, lost in evidently grieved meditations. He knew too well the ponderous phrases in which men of business purposely shroud their tricks, and he was not the man to be duped by them. He stole a glance at his fellow-notary and at Madame Evangelista, who went on talking to Paul, and he tried to detect some indications of the plot of which the elaborate design was beginning to be perceptible.

“Monsieur,” said Paul to Solonet, “I have to thank you for the care you have devoted to the conciliation of our interests. This arrangement solves all difficulties more happily than I had dared to hope—that is to say, if it suits you, madame,” he added, turning to Madame Evangelista, “for I will have nothing to say to any plan that is not equally satisfactory to you.”

“I?” said she. “Whatever will make my children happy will delight me. Do not consider me at all.”

“But that must not be,” said Paul eagerly. “If your comfort and dignity were not secured, Natalie and I should be more distressed about it than you yourself would be.”

“Do not be uneasy on that score, Monsieur le Comte,” said Solonet.

“Ah!” thought Maître Mathias, “they mean to make him kiss the rod before they scourge him.”

“Be quite easy,” Solonet went on; “there is such a spirit of speculation in Bordeaux just now, that investments for annuities are to be made on very advantageous terms. After handing over to you the fifty thousand crowns due to you on the sale of the house and furniture, I believe I may guarantee to madame a residue of two hundred thousand francs. This I undertake to invest in an annuity on a first mortgage on an estate worth a million, and to get ten percent, twenty-five thousand francs a year. Thus we should unite two very nearly equal fortunes. Mademoiselle Natalie will bring forty thousand francs a year in five percents, and a hundred and fifty thousand francs in money, which will yield seven thousand francs a year; total, forty-seven as against your forty-six thousand.”

“That is quite plain,” said Paul.

As he ended his speech, Solonet had cast a sidelong glance at his client, not unseen by Mathias, and which was as much as to say, “Bring up your reserve.”

“Why!” cried Madame Evangelista, in a tone of joy that seemed quite genuine, “I can give Natalie my diamonds; they must be worth at least a hundred thousand francs.”

“We can have them valued,” said Solonet, “and this entirely alters the case. Nothing, then, can hinder Monsieur le Comte from giving a discharge in full for the sums due to Mademoiselle Natalie as her share of her father’s fortune, or the betrothed couple from taking the guardian’s accounts as passed, at the reading of the contract. If madame, with truly Spanish magnificence, despoils herself to fulfill her obligations within a hundred thousand francs of the sum-total, it is but fair to release her.”

“Nothing could be fairer,” said Paul. “I am only overpowered by so much generosity.”

“Is not my daughter my second self?” said Madame Evangelista.

Maître Mathias detected an expression of joy on Madame Evangelista’s face when she saw the difficulties so nearly set aside; and this, and the sudden recollection of the diamonds, brought out like fresh troops, confirmed all his suspicions.

“The scene was planned between them,” thought he, “as gamblers pack the cards when some pigeon is to be rooked. So the poor boy I have known from his cradle is to be plucked alive by a mother-in-law, done brown by love, and ruined by his wife? After taking such care of his fine estate, am I to see it gobbled up in a single evening? Three millions and a-half mortgaged, in fact, to guarantee eleven hundred thousand francs of her portion, which these two women will make him throw away—”

As he thus discerned in Madame Evangelista’s soul a scheme which was not dishonest or criminal—which was not thieving, or cheating, or swindling—which was not based on any evil or blamable feeling, but yet contained the germ of every crime, Maître Mathias was neither shocked nor generously indignant. He was not a misanthrope; he was an old lawyer, inured by his business to the keen self-interest of men of the world, to their ingenious treachery, more deadly than a bold highway murder committed by some poor devil who is guillotined with due solemnity. In the higher ranks these passages of arms, these diplomatic discussions, are like the little dark corners in which every kind of filth is shot.

Maître Mathias, very sorry for his client, cast a long look into the future, and saw no hope of good.

“Well, we must take the field with the same weapons,” said he to himself, “and beat them on their own ground.”

At this juncture Paul, Solonet, and Madame Evangelista, dismayed by the old man’s silence, were feeling the necessity of this stern censor’s approbation to sanction these arrangements, and all three looked at him.

“Well, my dear sir, and what do you think of this?” asked Paul.

“This is what I think,” replied the uncompromising and conscientious old man, “you are not rich enough to commit such princely follies. The estate of Lanstrac, valued at three percent, is worth one million of francs, including the furniture; the farms of le Grassol and le Guadet, with the vineyards of Bellerose, are worth another million; your two residences and furniture a third million. To meet these three millions, yielding an income of forty-seven thousand two hundred francs, Mademoiselle Natalie shows eight hundred thousand francs in the funds, and let us say one hundred thousand francs’ worth of diamonds—at a hypothetical valuation! Also, one hundred and fifty thousand francs in cash—one million and fifty thousand francs in all. Then, in the face of these facts, my friend here triumphantly asserts that we are uniting equal fortunes! He requires us to stand indebted in a hundred thousand francs to our children, since we are to give the lady a discharge in full, by taking the guardian’s accounts as passed, for a sum of eleven hundred and fifty-six thousand francs, while receiving only one million and fifty thousand!

“You can listen to this nonsense with a lover’s rapture; and do you suppose that old Mathias, who is not in love, will forget his arithmetic and fail to appreciate the difference between landed estate of enormous value as capital, and of increasing value, and the income derivable from money in securities which are liable to variations in value and diminution of interest. I am old enough to have seen land improve and funds fall.—You called me in, Monsieur le Comte, to stipulate for your interests; allow me to protect them or dismiss me.”

“If monsieur looks for a fortune of which the capital is a match for his own,” said Solonet, “we have nothing like three millions and a half; that is self-evident. If you can show these overpowering millions, we have but our one poor little million to offer—a mere trifle! three times as much as the dower of an Archduchess of Austria. Bonaparte received two hundred and fifty thousand francs when he married Marie Louise.”

“Marie Louise ruined Napoleon,” said Maître Mathias in a growl.

Natalie’s mother understood the bearing of this speech.

“If my sacrifices are in vain,” she exclaimed, “I decline to carry such a discussion any further; I trust to the Count’s discretion, and renounce the honor of his proposals for my daughter.”

After the manoeuvres planned by the young notary this battle of conflicting interests had reached the point where the victory ought to have rested with Madame Evangelista. The mother-in-law had opened her heart, abandoned her possessions, and was almost released. The intending husband was bound to accept the conditions laid down beforehand by the collusion of Maître Solonet and his client, or sin against every law of generosity, and be false to his love.

Like the hand of the clock moved by the works, Paul came duly to the point.

“What, madame,” cried he, “you could undo in one moment—”

“Why, monsieur, to whom do I owe my duty? To my daughter.—When she is one-and-twenty she will pass my accounts and release me. She will have a million francs, and can, if she pleases, choose among the sons of the peers of France. Is she not the daughter of a Casa-Real?”

“Madame is quite justified. Why should she be worse off today than she will be fourteen months hence? Do not rob her of the benefits of her position,” said Solonet.

“Mathias,” said Paul, with deep grief, “there are two ways of being ruined—and at this moment you have undone me!”

He went towards the old lawyer, no doubt intending to order that the contract should be at once drawn up. Mathias forefended this disaster by a glance which seemed to say, “Wait!” He saw tears in Paul’s eyes—tears of shame at the tenor of this debate, and at the peremptory tone in which Madame Evangelista had thrown him over—and he checked them by a start, the start of Archimedes crying Eureka!

The words “Peer of France” had flashed light on his mind like a torch in a cavern.

At this instant Natalie reappeared, as lovely as the dawn, and said with an innocent air:

“Am I in the way?”

“Strangely in the way, my child!” replied her mother, with cruel bitterness.

“Come, dear Natalie,” said Paul, taking her hand and leading her to a chair by the fire, “everything is settled!” for he could not endure to think that his hopes were overthrown.

And Mathias eagerly put in:

“Yes, everything can yet be settled.”

Like a general who in one move baffles the tactics of the enemy, the old lawyer had had a vision of the Genius that watches over notaries, unfolding before him in legal script a conception that might save the future prospects of Paul and of his children. Maître Solonet knew of no other issue from these irreconcilable difficulties than the determination to which the young Count had been led by love, and by this storm of contending feelings and interests; so he was excessively surprised by his senior’s remark.

Curious to know what remedy Maître Mathias had to suggest for a state of things which must have seemed to him past all hope, he asked him:

“What have you to propose!”

“Natalie, my dear child, leave us,” said Madame Evangelista.

“Mademoiselle is not de trop,” replied Maître Mathias, with a smile. “I speak as much for her as for Monsieur le Comte.”

There was a solemn silence, each one in great excitement awaiting the old man’s speech with the utmost curiosity.

“In our day,” Mathias went on after a pause, “the notary’s profession has changed in many ways. In our day political revolutions affect the future prospects of families, and this used not to be the case. Formerly life ran in fixed grooves, ranks were clearly defined—”

“We are not here to listen to a lecture on political economy, but to arrange a marriage contract,” said Solonet, with flippant impatience, and interrupting the old man.

“I beg you to allow me to speak in my turn,” said Mathias.

Solonet took his seat on the ottoman, saying to Madame Evangelista in an undertone:

“Now you will learn what we lawyers mean by rigmarole.”

“Notaries are consequently obliged to watch the course of politics, since they now are intimately concerned with private affairs. To give you an instance: Formerly noble families had inalienable fortunes, but the Revolution overthrew them; the present system tends to reconstructing such fortunes,” said the old man, indulging somewhat in the twaddle of the tabellionaris boa constrictor. “Now, Monsieur le Comte, in virtue of his name, his talents, and his wealth, is evidently destined to sit some day in the lower Chamber; destiny may perhaps lead him to the upper and hereditary Chamber; and as we know, he has every qualification that may justify our prognostics.—Are you not of my opinion, madame?” said he to the widow.

“You have anticipated my dearest hope,” said she. “Manerville must be a Peer of France, or I shall die of grief.”

“All that may tend to that end—?” said Maître Mathias, appealing to the mother-in-law with a look of frank good humor.

“Answers to my dearest wish,” she put in.

“Well, then,” said Mathias, “is not this marriage a fitting opportunity for creating an entail? Such a foundation will most certainly be an argument in the eyes of the present government for the nomination of my client when a batch of peers is created. Monsieur le Comte will, of course, dedicate to this purpose the estate of Lanstrac, worth about a million. I do not ask that Mademoiselle should contribute an equal sum; that would not be fair; but we may take eight hundred thousand francs of her money for the purpose. I know of two estates for sale at this moment, bordering on the lands of Lanstrac, in which those eight hundred thousand francs, to be sunk in real estate, may be invested at four and a half percent. The Paris house ought also to be included in the entail. The surplus of the two fortunes, wisely managed, will amply suffice to provide for the younger children.—If the contracting parties can agree as to these details, Monsieur de Manerville may then pass your guardian’s accounts and be chargeable for the balance. I will consent.”

“Questa coda non è di quetso gatto!” (this tail does not fit that cat) exclaimed Madame Evangelista, looking at her sponser Solonet, and pointing to Maître Mathias.

“There is something behind all this,” said Solonet in an undertone.

“And what is all this muddle for?” Paul asked of Mathias, going with him into the adjoining room.

“To save you from ruin,” said the old notary in a whisper. “You are quite bent on marrying a girl—and her mother—who have made away with two millions of francs in seven years; you are accepting a debt of more than a hundred thousand francs to your children, to whom you will some day have to hand over eleven hundred and fifty-six thousand francs on their mother’s behalf, when you are receiving hardly a million. You run the risk of seeing your whole fortune melt away in five years, leaving you as bare as St. John the Baptist, while you will remain the debtor in enormous sums to your wife and her representatives.—If you choose to embark in that boat, go on, Monsieur le Comte; but at least allow your old friend to save the house of Manerville.”

“But how will this save it?” asked Paul.

“Listen, Monsieur le Comte; you are very much in love?”

“Yes,” replied Paul.

“A man in love is about as secret as a cannon shot; I will tell you nothing!—If you were to repeat things, your marriage might come to nothing, so I place your love under the protection of my silence. You trust to my fidelity?”

“What a question!”

“Well, then, let me tell you that Madame Evangelista, her notary, and her daughter were playing a trick on us all through, and are more than clever. By Heaven, what sharp practice!”

“Natalie?” cried Paul.

“Well, I will not swear to that,” said the old man. “You want her—take her! But I wish this marriage might fall through without the smallest blame to you!”

“Why?”

“That girl would beggar Peru. … Besides, she rides like a circus-rider; she is what you may call emancipated. Women of that sort make bad wives.”

Paul pressed his old friend’s hand and replied with a little fatuous smile.

“Don’t be alarmed.—And for the moment, what must I do?”

“Stand firm to these conditions; they will consent, for the bargain does not damage their interests. And besides, all Madame Evangelista wants is to get her daughter married; I have seen her hand; do not trust her.”

Paul returned to the drawing-room, where he found the widow talking in low tones to Solonet, just as he had been talking to Mathias. Natalie, left out of this mysterious conference, was playing with a screen. Somewhat out of countenance, she was wondering, “What absurdity keeps me from all knowledge of my own concerns?”

The younger lawyer was talking in the general outlines and remote effects of a stipulation based on the personal pride of the parties concerned, into which his client had blindly rushed. But though Mathias was now nothing else but a notary, Solonet was still to some degree a man, and carried some juvenile conceit into his dealings. It often happens that personal vanity makes a young lawyer forgetful of his client’s interests. Under these circumstances, Maître Solonet, who would not allow the widow to think that Nestor was beating Achilles, was advising her to conclude the matter at once on these lines. Little did he care for the ultimate fulfilment of the contract; to him victory meant the release of Madame Evangelista with an assured income, and the marriage of Natalie.

“All Bordeaux will know that you have settled about eleven hundred thousand francs on your daughter, and that you still have twenty-five thousand francs a year,” said Solonet in the lady’s ear. “I had not hoped for such a brilliant result.”

“But,” said she, “explain to me why the creation of an entail should so immediately have stilled the storm.”

“Distrust of you and your daughter. An entailed estate is inalienable: neither husband nor wife can touch it.”

“That is a positive insult.”

“Oh, no. We call that foresight. The good man caught you in a snare. If you refuse the entail, he will say, Then you want to squander my client’s fortune’; whereas, if he creates an entail, it is out of all risk, just as if the couple were married under the provisions of the trust.”

Solonet silenced his own scruples by reflecting:

“These stipulations will only take effect in the remote future, and by that time Madame Evangelista will be dead and buried.”

She, for her part, was satisfied with Solonet’s explanation; she had entire confidence in him. She was perfectly ignorant of the law; she saw her daughter married, and that was all she asked for the nonce; she was delighted at their success. And so, as Mathias suspected, neither Solonet nor Madame Evangelista as yet understood the full extent of his plan, which had incontrovertible reasons to support it.

“Well, then, Monsieur Mathias,” said the widow, “everything is satisfactory.”

“Madame, if you and Monsieur le Comte agree to these conditions, you should exchange pledges.—It is fully understood by you both, it is not,” he went on, “that the marriage takes place only on condition of the creation of an entail, including the estate of Lanstrac and the house in the Rue de la Pépinière, both belonging to the intending husband, item eight hundred thousand francs deducted in money from the portion of the intending wife to be invested in land? Forgive me, madame, for repeating this; a solemn and positive pledge is necessary in such a case. The formation of an entail requires many formalities—it must be registered in Chancery and receive the royal signature; and we ought to proceed at once to the purchase of the lands, so as to include them in the schedule of property which the royal patent renders inalienable.—In many families a document would be required; but, as between you, verbal consent will no doubt be sufficient. Do you both consent?”

“Yes,” said Madame Evangelista.

“Yes,” said Paul.

“And how about me?” asked Natalie, laughing.

“You, mademoiselle, are a minor,” replied Solonet, “and that need not distress you!”

It was then agreed that Maître Mathias should draw up the contract, and Maître Solonet audit the guardian’s accounts, and that all the papers should be signed, in agreement with the law, a day or two before the wedding.

After a few civilities the lawyers rose.

“It is raining, Mathias; shall I take you home? I have my cab here,” said Solonet.

“My carriage is at your service,” said Paul, preparing to accompany the good man.

“I will not rob you of a minute,” said the old man; “I will accept my friend’s offer.”

“Well,” said Achilles to Nestor, as the carriage rolled on its way, “you have been truly patriarchal. Those young people would, no doubt, have ruined themselves.”

“I was uneasy about the future,” said Mathias, not betraying the real motive of his proposal.

At this moment the two lawyers were like two actors who shake hands behind the scenes after playing on the stage a scene of hatred and provocation.

“But is it not my business,” said Solonet, who was thinking of technicalities, “to purchase the lands of which you speak? Is it not our money that is to be invested?”

“How can you include Mademoiselle Evangelista’s land in an entail created by the Comte de Manerville?” asked Mathias.

“That difficulty can be settled in Chancery,” said Solonet.

“But I am the seller’s notary as well as the buyer’s,” replied Mathias. “Besides, Monsieur de Manerville can purchase in his own name. When it comes to paying, we can state the use of the wife’s portion.”

“You have an answer for everything, my worthy senior,” said Solonet, laughing. “You have been grand this evening, and you have beaten us.”

“Well, for an old fellow unprepared for your batteries loaded with grapeshot, it was not so bad, heh?”

“Ah, ha!” laughed Solonet.

The tedious contest in which the happiness of a family had been so narrowly risked was to them no more than a matter of legal polemics. “We have not gone through forty years of chicanery for nothing,” said Mathias. “Solonet,” he added, “I am a good-natured fellow; you may be present at the sale and purchase of the lands to be added to the estate.”

“Thank you, my good friend! You will find me at your service in case of need.”

While the two notaries were thus peaceably going on their way, with no emotion beyond a little dryness of the throat, Paul and Madame Evangelista were suffering from the nervous trepidation, the fluttering about the heart, the spasm of brain and spine, to which persons of strong passions are prone after a scene when their interests or their feelings have been severely attacked. In Madame Evangelista these mutterings of the dispersing storm were aggravated by a terrible thought, a lurid gleam that needed explanation.

“Has not Maître Mathias overthrown my six months’ labors?” she wondered. “Has he not destroyed my influence over Paul by filling him with base suspicions during their conference in the inner room?”

She stood in front of the fireplace, her elbow resting on the corner of the mantelpiece, lost in thought.

When the outer gate closed behind the notary’s carriage, she turned to her son-in-law, eager to settle her doubts.

“This has been the most terrible day of my life,” cried Paul, really glad to see the end of all these difficulties. “I know no tougher customer than old Mathias. God grant his wishes and make me peer of France! Dear Natalie, I desire it more for your sake than for my own. You are my sole ambition. I live in and for you.”

On hearing these words spoken from the heart, and especially as she looked into Paul’s clear eyes, whose look was as free from any concealment as his open brow, Madame Evangelista’s joy was complete. She blamed herself for the somewhat sharp terms in which she had tried to spur her son-in-law, and in the triumph of success determined to make all smooth for the future. Her face was calm again, and her eyes expressed the sweet friendliness that made her so attractive as she replied:

“I may truly say the same. And perhaps, my dear boy, my Spanish temper carried me further than my heart intended. Be always what you are—as good as gold! And owe me no grudge for a few ill-considered words. Give me your hand—”

Paul was overwhelmed; he blamed himself in a thousand things, and embraced Madame Evangelista.

“Dear Paul,” said she with emotion, “why could not those two scriveners arrange matters without us, since it has all come right in the end?”

“But then,” said Paul, “I should not have known how noble and generous you could be.”

“Well said, Paul!” cried Natalie, taking his hand.

“We have several little matters to settle yet, my dear boy,” said Madame Evangelista. “My daughter and I are superior to the follies which some people think so much of. For instance, Natalie will need no diamonds—I give her mine.”

“Oh! my dear mother, do you suppose I should accept them?” cried Natalie.

“Yes, my child, they are a condition of the contract.”

“I will not have them! I will never marry!” said Natalie vehemently. “Keep what my father gave you with so much pleasure. How can Monsieur Paul demand—”

“Be silent, dear child,” said her mother, her eyes filling with tears; “my ignorance of business requires far more than that.”

“What?”

“I must sell this house to pay you what I owe you.”

“What can you owe to me,” said the girl—“to me, who owe my life to you? Can I ever repay you, on the contrary? If my marriage is to cost you the smallest sacrifice, I will never marry!”

“You are but a child!”

“My dear Natalie,” said Paul, “you must understand that it is neither I, nor you, nor your mother who insists on these sacrifices, but the children—”

“But if I do not marry,” she interrupted.

“Then you do not love me?” said Paul.

“Come, silly child,” said her mother; “do you suppose that a marriage contract is a house of cards to be blown down at your pleasure? Poor ignorant darling, you do not know what trouble we have been at to create an entailed estate for your eldest son. Do not throw us back into the troubles we have escaped from.”

“But why ruin my mother?” said Natalie to Paul.

“Why are you so rich?” he said, with a smile.

“Do not discuss the matter too far, my children; you are not married yet,” said Madame Evangelista. “Paul,” she went on, “Natalie needs no wedding gifts, no jewels, no trousseau; she has everything in profusion. Save the money you would have spent in presents to secure to yourselves some permanent home luxuries. There is nothing to my mind so foolishly vulgar as the expenditure of a hundred thousand francs in a corbeille* of which nothing is left at last but an old white satin-covered trunk. Five thousand francs a year, on the other hand, as pin-money, save a young wife many small cares, and are hers for life. And indeed you will want the money of the corbeille to refurnish your house in Paris this winter. We will come back to Lanstrac in the spring; Solonet will have settled all our affairs in the course of the winter.”

“Then all is well,” said Paul, at the height of happiness.

“And I shall see Paris!” cried Natalie, in a tone that might indeed have alarmed a de Marsay.

“If that is quite settled, I will write to de Marsay to secure a box for the winter season at the Italian opera.”

“You are most nice! I dared not ask it of you,” said Natalie. “Marriage is a delightful institution if it gives husbands the power of guessing their wives’ wishes.”

* The bridegroom’s presents of lace, jewels, and apparel constitute the corbeille.

“That is precisely what it is,” said Paul. “But it is midnight—I must go.”

“Why so early this evening?” said Madame Evangelista, who was lavish of the attentions to which men are so keenly alive.

Though the whole business had been conducted on terms of the most refined politeness, the effect of this clashing of interests had sown a germ of distrust and hostility between the lady and her son-in-law, ready to develop at the first spark of anger, or under the heat of a too strong display of feeling.

In most families the question of settlements and allowances under the marriage contract is prone to give rise to these primitive conflicts, stirred up by wounded pride or injured feelings, by some reluctance to make any sacrifice, or the desire to minimize it. When a difficulty arises, must there not be a conqueror and a conquered? The parents of the plighted couple try to bring the affair to a happy issue; in their eyes it is a purely commercial transaction, allowing all the tricks, the profits, and the deceptions of trade. As a rule, the husband only is initiated into the secret of the transaction, and the young wife remains, as did Natalie, ignorant of the stipulations which make her rich or poor.

Paul, as he went home, reflected that, thanks to his lawyer’s ingenuity, his fortune was almost certainly secured against ruin. If Madame Evangelista lived with her daughter, the household would have more than a hundred thousand francs a year for ordinary expenses. Thus his hopes of a happy life would be realized.

“My mother-in-law seems to me a very good sort of woman,” he reflected, still under the influence of the wheedling ways by which Madame Evangelista had succeeded in dissipating the clouds raised by the discussion. “Mathias is mistaken. These lawyers are strange beings; they poison everything. The mischief was made by that contentious little Solonet, who wanted to be clever.”

While Paul, as he went to bed, was recapitulating the advantages he had won in the course of the evening, Madame Evangelista was no less confident of having gained the victory.

“Well, darling mother, are you satisfied?” said Natalie, following her mother into her bedroom.

“Yes, my love, everything has succeeded as I wished, and I feel a weight taken off my shoulders, which crushed me this morning. Paul is really an excellent fellow. Dear boy! Yes, we can certainly give him a delightful life. You will make him happy, and I will take care of his political prospects. The Spanish ambassador is an old friend of mine. I will renew my acquaintance with him and with several other persons. We shall soon be in the heart of politics, and all will be well with us. The pleasure for you, dear children; for me the later occupations of life—the game of ambition.

“Do not be alarmed at my selling this house; do you suppose we should ever return to Bordeaux? To Lanstrac—yes. But we shall spend every winter in Paris, where our true interests now lie.—Well, Natalie, was what I asked you so difficult to do?”

“My dear mother, I was ashamed at moments.”

“Solonet advises me to buy an annuity with the price of the house,” said Madame Evangelista, “but I must make some other arrangement. I will not deprive you of one sou of my capital.”

“You were all very angry, I saw,” said Natalie. “How was the storm appeased?”

“By the offer of my diamonds,” replied her mother. “Solonet was in the right. How cleverly he managed the business! But fetch my jewel-box, Natalie. I never seriously inquired what those diamonds were worth. When I said a hundred thousand francs, it was absurd. Did not Madame de Gyas declare that the necklace and earrings your father gave me on the day of our wedding were alone worth as much? My poor husband was so lavish!—And then the family diamond given by Philip II to the Duke of Alva, and left to me by my aunt—the Discreto—was, I believe, valued then at four thousand quadruples.”

Natalie brought out and laid on her mother’s dressing-table pearl necklaces, sets of jewels, gold bracelets, gems of every kind, piling them up with the inexpressible satisfaction that rejoices the heart of some women at the sight of these valuables, with which, according to the Talmud, the fallen angels tempted the daughters of men, bringing up from the bowels of the earth these blossoms of celestial fires.

“Certainly,” said Madame Evangelista, “although I know nothing of precious stones but how to accept them and wear them, it seems to me that these must be worth a great deal of money. And then, if we all live together, I can sell my plate, which is worth thirty thousand francs at the mere value of the silver. I remember when we brought it from Lima that was the valuation at the Custom House here.—Solonet is right. I will send for Élie Magus. The Jew will tell me the value of these stones. I may perhaps escape sinking the rest of my capital in an annuity.”

“What a beautiful string of pearls!” said Natalie.

“I hope he will give you that if he loves you. Indeed, he ought to have all the stones reset and make them a present to you. The diamonds are yours by settlement.—Well, goodnight, my darling. After such a fatiguing day, we both need sleep.”

The woman of fashion, the Creole, the fine lady, incapable of understanding the conditions of a contract that was not yet drawn up, fell asleep in full content at seeing her daughter the wife of a man she could so easily manage, who would leave them to be on equal terms the mistresses of his house, and whose fortune, combined with their own, would allow of their living in the way to which they were accustomed. Even after paying up her daughter, for whose whole fortune she was to receive a discharge, Madame Evangelista would still have enough to live upon.

“How absurd I was to be so worried!” said she to herself. “I wish the marriage was over and done with.”

So Madame Evangelista, Paul, Natalie, and the two lawyers were all delighted with the results of this first meeting. The Te Deum was sung in both camps—a perilous state of things! The moment must come when the vanquished would no longer be deluded. To Madame Evangelista her son-in-law was conquered.

Next morning Élie Magus came to the widow’s house, supposing, from the rumors current as to Mademoiselle Natalie’s approaching marriage to Count Paul, that they wanted to purchase diamonds. What, then, was his surprise on learning that he was wanted to make a more or less official valuation of the mother-in-law’s jewels. The Jewish instinct, added to a few insidious questions, led him to conclude that the value was to be included in the property under the marriage contract.

As the stones were not for sale, he priced them as a merchant selling to a private purchaser. Experts alone know Indian diamonds from those of Brazil. The stones from Golconda and Vizapur are distinguishable by a whiteness and clear brilliancy which the others have not, their hue being yellower, and this depreciates their selling value. Madame Evangelista’s necklace and earrings, being entirely composed of Asiatic stones, was valued by Élie Magus at two hundred and fifty thousand francs. As to the Discreto, it was, he said, one of the finest diamonds extant in private hands, and was worth a hundred thousand francs.

On hearing these figures, which showed her how liberal her husband had been, Madame Evangelista asked whether she could have that sum at once.

“If you wish to sell them, madame,” said the Jew, “I can only give you seventy thousand francs for the single stone, and a hundred and sixty thousand for the necklace and earrings.”

“And why such a reduction?” asked Madame Evangelista in surprise.

“Madame,” said he, “the finer the jewels, the longer we have to keep them. The opportunities for sale are rare in proportion to the greater value of the diamonds. As the dealer cannot lose the interest on his money, the recoupment for that interest, added to the risks of rise and fall in the market, accounts for the difference between the selling and purchasing value.—For twenty years you have been losing the interest of three hundred thousand francs. If you have worn your diamonds ten times a year, it has cost you a thousand crowns each time. How many handsome dresses you might have had for a thousand crowns! Persons who keep their diamonds are fools; however, happily for us, ladies do not understand these calculations.”

“I am much obliged to you for having explained them to me; I will profit by the lesson.”

“Then you want to sell?” cried the Jew eagerly.

“What are the rest worth?” said Madame Evangelista.

The Jew examined the gold of the settings, held the pearls to the light, turned over the rubies, the tiaras, brooches, bracelets, clasps, and chains, and mumbled out:

“There are several Portuguese diamonds brought from Brazil. I cannot give more than a hundred thousand francs for the lot. But sold to a customer,” he added, “they would fetch more than fifty thousand crowns.”

“We will keep them,” said the lady.

“You are wrong,” replied Élie Magus. “With the income of the sum now sunk in them, in five years you could buy others just as fine, and still have the capital.”

This rather singular interview was soon known, and confirmed the rumors to which the discussion of the contract had given rise. In a provincial town everything is known. The servants of the house, having heard loud voices, supposed the dispute to have been warmer than it was; their gossip with other folks’ servants spread far and wide, and from the lower depths came up to the masters. The attention of the upper and citizen circles was concentrated on the marriage of two persons of equal wealth. Everybody, great and small, talked the matter over, and within a week the strangest reports were afloat in Bordeaux.—Madame Evangelista was selling her house, so she must be ruined.—She had offered her diamonds to Élie Magus.—Nothing was yet final between her and the Comte de Manerville.—Would the marriage ever come off? Some said, Yes; others said, No. The two lawyers, on being questioned, denied these calumnies, and said that the difficulties were purely technical, arising from the formalities of creating an entail.

But when public opinion has rushed down an incline, it is very difficult to get it up again. Though Paul went every day to Madame Evangelista’s, and in spite of the assertions of the two notaries, the insinuated slander held its own. Several young ladies, and their mothers or their aunts, aggrieved by a match of which they or their families had dreamed for themselves, could no more forgive Madame Evangelista for her good luck than an author forgives his friend for a success. Some were only too glad to be avenged for the twenty years of luxury and splendor by which the Spaniards had crushed their vanities. A bigwig at the Préfecture declared that the two notaries and the two parties concerned could say no more, nor behave otherwise, if the rupture were complete. The time it took to settle the entail confirmed the suspicions of the citizens of Bordeaux.

“They will sit by the chimney-corner all the winter; then, in the spring, they will go to some watering-place; and in the course of the year we shall hear that the match is broken off.”

“You will see,” said one set, “in order to save the credit of both parties, the obstacles will not have arisen on either side; there will be some demur in Chancery, some hitch discovered by the lawyers to hinder the entail.”

“Madame Evangelista,” said the others, “has been living at a rate that would have exhausted the mines of Valenciana. Then, when payday came round there was nothing to be found.”

What a capital opportunity for calculating the handsome widow’s expenditure, so as to prove her ruin to a demonstration! Humor ran so high that bets were laid for and against the marriage. And, in accordance with the accepted rules of society, this tittle-tattle remained unknown to the interested parties. No one was sufficiently inimical to Paul or Madame Evangelista to attack them on the subject.

Paul had some business at Lanstrac and took advantage of it to make up a shooting-party, inviting some of the young men of the town as a sort of farewell to his bachelor life. This shooting-party was regarded by society as a flagrant confirmation of its suspicions.

At this juncture Madame de Gyas, who had a daughter to marry, thought it well to sound her way, and to rejoice sadly over the checkmate offered to Madame Evangelista. Natalie and her mother were not a little astonished to see the Marquise’s badly-assumed distress, and asked her if anything had annoyed her.

“Why,” said she, “can you be ignorant of the reports current in Bordeaux? Though I feel sure that they are false, I have come to ascertain the truth and put a stop to them, at any rate in my own circle of friends. To be the dupe or the accomplice of such a misapprehension is to be in a false position, which no true friend can endure to remain in.”

“But what in the world is happening?” asked the mother and daughter.

Madame de Gyas then had the pleasure of repeating everybody’s comments, not sparing her intimate friends a single dagger-thrust. Natalie and her mother looked at each other and laughed; but they quite understood the purpose and motives of their friend’s revelation. The Spanish lady revenged herself much as Célimène did on Arsinoé.

“My dear—you who know what provincial life is—you must know of what a mother is capable when she has a daughter on her hands who does not marry, for lack of a fortune and a lover, of beauty and talent—for lack of everything sometimes!—She would rob a diligence, she would commit murder, waylay a man at a street corner, and give herself away a hundred times, if she were worth giving. There are plenty such in Bordeaux, who are ready, no doubt, to attribute to us their thoughts and actions.—Naturalists have described the manners and customs of many fierce animals, but they have overlooked the mother and daughter in quest of a husband. They are hyaenas who, as the Psalmist has it, seek whom they may devour, and who add to the nature of the wild beast the intelligence of man and the genius of woman.

“That such little Bordeaux spiders as Mademoiselle de Belor, Mademoiselle de Trans, and their like, who have spread their nets for so long without seeing a fly, or hearing the least hum of wings near them—that they should be furious I understand, and I forgive them their venomous tattle. But that you, who have a title and money, who are not in the least provincial, who have a clever and accomplished daughter, pretty and free to pick and choose—that you, so far above everybody here by your Parisian elegance, should have taken such a tone, is really a matter of astonishment. Am I expected to account to the public for the matrimonial stipulations which our men of business have considered necessary under the political conditions which will govern my son-in-law’s existence? Is the mania for public discussion to invade the privacy of family life? Ought I to have invited the fathers and mothers of your province, under sealed covers, to come and vote on the articles of our marriage contract?”

A torrent of epigrams was poured out on Bordeaux.

Madame Evangelista was about to leave the town; she could afford to criticise her friends and enemies, to caricature them, and lash them at will, having nothing to fear from them. So she gave vent to all the remarks she had stored up, the revenges she had postponed, and her surprise that anyone should deny the existence of the sun at noonday.

“Really, my dear,” said the Marquise de Gyas, “Monsieur de Manerville’s visit to Lanstrac, these parties to young men—under the circumstances—”

“Really, my dear,” retorted the fine lady, interrupting her, “can you suppose that we care for the trumpery proprieties of a middle-class marriage? Am I to keep Count Paul in leading-strings, as if he would run away? Do you think he needs watching by the police? Need we fear his being spirited away by some Bordeaux conspiracy?”

“Believe me, my dear friend, you give me infinite pleasure—”

The Marquise was cut short in her speech by the manservant announcing Paul. Like all lovers, Paul had thought it delightful to ride eight leagues in order to spend an hour with Natalie. He had left his friends to their sport, and came in, booted and spurred, his whip in his hand.

“Dear Paul,” said Natalie, “you have no idea how effectually you are answering madame at this moment.”

When Paul heard the calumnies that were rife in Bordeaux, he laughed instead of being angry.

“The good people have heard, no doubt, that there will be none of the gay and uproarious doings usual in the country, no midday ceremony in church, and they are furious.—Well, dear mother,” said he, kissing Madame Evangelista’s hand, “we will fling a ball at their heads on the day when the contract is signed, as a fête is thrown to the mob in the square of the Champs-Élysées, and give our good friends the painful pleasure of such a signing as is rarely seen in a provincial city!”

This incident was of great importance. Madame Evangelista invited all Bordeaux on the occasion, and expressed her intention of displaying in this final entertainment a magnificence that should give the lie unmistakably to silly and false reports. She was thus solemnly pledged to the world to carry through this marriage.

The preparations for this ball went on for forty days, and it was known as the “evening of the camellias,” there were such immense numbers of these flowers on the stairs, in the anteroom, and in the great supper-room. The time agreed with the necessary delay for the preliminary formalities of the marriage, and the steps taken in Paris for the settlement of the entail. The lands adjoining Lanstrac were purchased, the banns were published, and doubts were dispelled. Friends and foes had nothing left to think about but the preparation of their dresses for the great occasion.

The time taken up by these details overlaid the difficulties raised at the first meeting, and carried away into oblivion the words and retorts of the stormy altercation that had arisen over the question of the settlements. Neither Paul nor his mother-in-law thought any more of the matter. Was is not, as Madame Evangelista had said, the lawyers’ business? But who is there that has not known, in the rush of a busy phase of life, what it is to be suddenly startled by the voice of memory, speaking too late, and recalling some important fact, some imminent danger?

On the morning of the day when the contract was to be signed, one of these will-o’-the-wisps of the brain flashed upon Madame Evangelista between sleeping and waking. The phrase spoken by herself at the moment when Mathias agreed to Solonet’s proposal was, as it were, shouted in her ear: Questa coda non è di questo gatto. In spite of her ignorance of business, Madame Evangelista said to herself, “If that sharp old lawyer is satisfied, it is at the expense of one or other of the parties.” And the damaged interest was certainly not on Paul’s side, as she had hoped. Was it her daughter’s fortune, then, that was to pay the costs of the war? She resolved to make full inquiries as to the tenor of the bargain, though she did not consider what she could do in the event of finding her own interests too seriously compromised.

The events of this day had so serious an influence on Paul’s married life, that it is necessary to give some account of the external details which have their effect on every mind.

As the house was forthwith to be sold, the Comte de Manerville’s mother-in-law had hesitated at no expense. The forecourt was graveled, covered with a tent, and filled with shrubs, though it was winter. The camellias, which were talked of from Dax to Angoulême, decked the stairs and vestibules. A wall had been removed to enlarge the supper-room and ballroom. Bordeaux, splendid with the luxury of many a colonial fortune, eagerly anticipated a fairy scene. By eight o’clock, when the business was drawing to a close, the populace, curious to see the ladies’ dresses, formed a hedge on each side of the gateway. Thus the heady atmosphere of a great festivity excited all concerned at the moment of signing the contract. At the very crisis the little lamps fixed on yew-trees were already lighted, and the rumbling of the first carriages came up from the forecourt.

The two lawyers had dined with the bride and bridegroom and the mother-in-law. Mathias’ head-clerk, who was to see the contract signed by certain of the guests in the course of the evening, and to take care that it was not read, was also one of the party.

The reader will rack his memory in vain—no dress, no woman was ever to compare with Natalie’s beauty in her satin and lace, her hair beautifully dressed in a mass of curls falling about her neck; she was like a flower in its natural setting of foliage.

Madame Evangelista, in a cherry-colored velvet, cleverly designed to set off the brilliancy of her eyes, her complexion, and her hair, with all the beauty of a woman of forty, wore her pearl necklace clasped with the famous Discreto, to give the lie to slander.

Fully to understand the scene, it is necessary to remark that Paul and Natalie sat by the fire on a little sofa, and never listened to one word of the guardian’s accounts. One as much a child as the other, both equally happy, he in his hopes, she in her expectant curiosity, seeing life one calm blue heaven, rich, young, and in love, they never ceased whispering in each other’s ear. Paul, already regarding his passion as legalized, amused himself with kissing the tips of Natalie’s fingers, or just touching her snowy shoulders or her hair, hiding the raptures of these illicit joys from every eye. Natalie was playing with a screen of peacock feathers, a gift from Paul—a luckless omen in love, if we may accept the superstitious belief of some countries, as fatal as that of scissors, or any other cutting instrument, which is based, no doubt, on some association with the mythological Fates.

Madame Evangelista, sitting by the notaries, paid the closest attention to the reading of the two documents. After hearing the schedule of her accounts, very learnedly drawn out by Solonet, which showed a reduction of the three millions and some hundred thousand francs left by Monsieur Evangelista, to the famous eleven hundred and fifty-six thousand francs constituting Natalie’s portion, she called out to the young couple:

“Come, listen, children; this is your marriage contract.”

The clerk drank a glass of sugared water; Solonet and Mathias blew their noses; Paul and Natalie looked at the four personages, listened to the preamble, and then began to talk together again. The statements of revenues; the settlement of the whole estate on either party in the event of the other’s death without issue; the bequest, according to law, of one-quarter of the whole property absolutely to the wife, and of the interest of one-quarter more, however many children should survive; the schedule of the property held in common; the gift of the diamonds on the wife’s part, and of the books and horses on the husband’s—all passed without remark. Then came the settlement for the entail. And when everything had been read, and there was nothing to be done but to sign, Madame Evangelista asked what would be the effect of the entail.

“The entailed estate, madame, is inalienable; it is property separated from the general estate of the married pair, and reserved for the eldest son of the house from generation to generation, without his being thereby deprived of his share of the rest of the property.”

“And what are the consequences to my daughter?” she asked. Maître Mathias, incapable of disguising the truth, made reply:

“Madame, the entail being an inheritance derived from both fortunes, if the wife should be the first to die, and leaves one or several children, one of them a boy, Monsieur le Comte de Manerville will account to them for no more than three hundred and fifty-six thousand francs, from which he will deduct his one absolute fourth, and the fourth part of the interest of the residue. Thus their claim on him is reduced to about a hundred and sixty thousand francs independently of his share of profits on the common stock, the sums he could claim, etc. In the contrary case, if he should die first, leaving a son or sons, Madame de Manerville would be entitled to no more than three hundred and fifty-six thousand francs, to her share of all of Monsieur de Manerville’s estate that is not included in the entail, to the restitution of her diamonds, and her portion of the common stock.”

The results of Maître Mathias’ profound policy were now amply evident.

“My daughter is ruined,” said Madame Evangelista in a low voice.

The lawyers both heard her exclamation.

“Is it ruin,” said Maître Mathias in an undertone, “to establish an indestructible fortune for her family in the future?”

As he saw the expression of his client’s face, the younger notary thought it necessary to state the sum of the disaster in figures.

“We wanted to get three hundred thousand francs out of them, and they have evidently succeeded in getting eight hundred thousand out of us; the balance to their advantage on the contract is a loss of four hundred thousand francs to us for the benefit of the children.—We must break it off or go on,” he added to Madame Evangelista.

No words could describe the silence, though brief, that ensued. Mathias triumphantly awaited the signature of the two persons who had hoped to plunder his client. Natalie, incapable of understanding that she was bereft of half of her fortune, and Paul, not knowing that the house of Manerville was acquiring it, sat laughing and talking as before. Solonet and Madame Evangelista looked at each other, he concealing his indifference, she disguising a myriad angry feelings. After suffering from terrible remorse, and regarding Paul as the cause of her dishonesty, the widow had made up her mind to certain discreditable manoeuvres to cast the blunders of her guardianship on his shoulders, making him her victim. And now, in an instant, she had discovered that, instead of triumphing, she was overthrown, and that the real victim was her daughter. Thus guilty to no purpose, she was the dupe of an honest old man, whose esteem she had doubtless sacrificed. Was it not her own secret conduct that had inspired the stipulations insisted on by Mathias?

Hideous thought! Mathias had, doubtless, told Paul.

If he had not yet spoken, as soon as the contract should be signed that old wolf would warn his client of the dangers he had run and escaped, if it were only to gather the praises to which everybody is open. Would he not put him on his guard against a woman so astute as to have joined such an ignoble conspiracy? Would he not undermine the influence she had acquired over her son-in-law? And weak natures, once warned, turn obstinate, and never reconsider the circumstances.

So all was lost!

On the day when the discussion was opened, she had trusted to Paul’s feebleness and the impossibility of his retreating after advancing so far. And now it was she who had tied her own hands. Paul, three months since, would not have had many obstacles to surmount to break off the marriage; now, all Bordeaux knew that the lawyers had, two months ago, smoothed away every difficulty. The banns were published; the wedding was fixed for the next day but one. The friends of both families, all the town were arriving, dressed for the ball—how could she announce a postponement? The cause of the rupture would become known, the unblemished honesty of Maître Mathias would gain credence, his story would be believed in preference to hers. The laugh would be against the Evangelistas, of whom so many were envious. She must yield!

These painfully accurate reflections fell on Madame Evangelista like a waterspout and crushed her brain. Though she maintained a diplomatic impassibility, her chin showed the nervous jerking by which Catherine II betrayed her fury one day when, sitting on her throne and surrounded by her Court, she was defied by the young King of Sweden under almost similar circumstances. Solonet noted the spasmodic movement of the muscles that proclaimed a mortal hatred, a storm without a sound or a lightning-flash; and, in fact, at that moment, the widow had sworn such hatred of her son-in-law, such an implacable feud as the Arabs have left the germs of in the atmosphere of Spain.

“Monsieur,” said she to her notary, “you called this a rigmarole—it seems to me that nothing can be clearer.”

“Madame, allow me—”

“Monsieur,” she went on, without listening to Solonet, “if you did not understand the upshot of this bargain at the time of our former discussion, it is at least extraordinary that you should not have perceived it in the retirement of your study. It cannot be from incapacity.”

The young man led her into the adjoining room, saying to himself:

“More than a thousand crowns are due to me for the schedule of accounts, and a thousand more for the contract; six thousand francs I can make over the sale of the house—fifteen thousand francs in all.—We must keep our temper.”

He shut the door, gave Madame Evangelista the cold look of a man of business, guessing the feelings that agitated her, and said:

“Madame, how, when I have perhaps overstepped in your behalf the due limits of finesse, can you repay my devotion by such a speech?”

“But, monsieur—”

“Madame, I did not, it is true, fully estimate the amount of our surrender; but if you do not care to have Count Paul for your son-in-law, are you obliged to agree? The contract is not signed.—Give your ball and postpone the signing. It is better to take in all Bordeaux than to be taken in yourself.”

“And what excuse can I make to all the world—already prejudiced against us—to account for this delay?”

“A blunder in Paris, a document missing,” said Solonet.

“But the land that has been purchased?”

“Monsieur de Manerville will find plenty of matches with money.”

“He! Oh, he will lose nothing; we are losing everything on our side.”

“You,” said Solonet, “may have a Count, a better bargain, if the title is the great point of this match in your eyes.”

“No, no; we cannot throw our honor overboard in that fashion! I am caught in the trap, monsieur. All Bordeaux would ring with it tomorrow. We have solemnly pledged ourselves.”

“You wish Mademoiselle Natalie to be happy?” asked Solonet.

“That is the chief thing.”

“In France,” said the lawyer, “does not being happy mean being mistress of the hearth? She will lead that nincompoop Manerville by the nose. He is so stupid that he has seen nothing. Even if he should distrust you, he will still believe in his wife. And are not you and his wife one? Count Paul’s fate still lies in your hands.”

“If you should be speaking truly, I do not know what I could refuse you!” she exclaimed, with delight that glowed in her eyes.

“Come in again, then, madame,” said Solonet, understanding his client. “But, above all, listen to what I say; you may regard me as incapable afterwards if you please.”

“My dear friend,” said the young lawyer to Mathias, as he reentered the room, “for all your skill you have failed to foresee the contingency of Monsieur de Manerville’s death without issue, or, again, that of his leaving none but daughters. In either of those cases the entail would give rise to lawsuits with other Manervilles, for plenty would crop up, do not doubt it for a moment. It strikes me, therefore, as desirable to stipulate that in the former case the entailed property should be included in the general estate settled by each on either, and in the second that the entail should be cancelled as null and void. It is an agreement solely affecting the intending wife.”

“The clause seems to me perfectly fair,” said Mathias. “As to its ratification, Monsieur le Comte will make the necessary arrangements with the Court of Chancery, no doubt, if requisite.”

The younger notary took a pen and wrote in on the margin this ominous clause, to which Paul and Natalie paid no attention. Madame Evangelista sat with downcast eyes while it was read by Maître Mathias.

“Now to sign,” said the mother.

The strong voice which she controlled betrayed vehement excitement. She had just said to herself:

“No, my daughter shall not be ruined—but he shall! My daughter shall have his name, title, and fortune. If Natalie should ever discover that she does not love her husband, if some day she should love another man more passionately—Paul will be exiled from France, and my daughter will be free, happy, and rich.”

Though Maître Mathias was expert in the analysis of interests, he had no skill in analyzing human passions. He accepted the lady’s speech as an honorable surrender, instead of seeing that it was a declaration of war. While Solonet and his clerk took care that Natalie signed in full at the foot of every document—a business that required some time—Mathias took Paul aside and explained to him the bearing of the clauses which he had introduced to save him from inevitable ruin.

“You have a mortgage on this house for a hundred and fifty thousand francs,” he said in conclusion, “and we foreclose tomorrow. I have at my office the securities in the funds, which I have taken care to place in your wife’s name. Everything is quite regular.—But the contract includes a receipt for the sum represented by the diamonds; ask for them. Business is business. Diamonds are just now going up in the market; they may go down again. Your purchase of the lands of Auzac and Saint-Froult justifies you in turning everything into money so as not to touch your wife’s income. So, no false pride, Monsieur le Comte. The first payment is to be made after the formalities are concluded; use the diamonds for that purpose; it amounts to two hundred thousand francs. You will have the mortgage value of this house for the second call, and the income on the entailed property will help you to pay off the remainder. If only you are firm enough to spend no more than fifty thousand francs for the first three years, you will recoup the two hundred thousand francs you now owe. If you plant vines on the hill slopes of Saint-Froult, you may raise the returns to twenty-six thousand francs. Thus the entailed property, without including your house in Paris, will some day be worth fifty thousand francs a year—one of the finest estates I know of.—And so you will have married very handsomely.”

Paul pressed his old friend’s hands with warm affection. The gesture did not escape Madame Evangelista, who came to hand the pen to Paul. Her suspicion was now certainty; she was convinced that Paul and Mathias had an understanding. Surges of blood, hot with rage and hatred, choked her heart. Paul was warned!

After ascertaining that every clause was duly signed, that the three contracting parties had initialed the bottom of every page with their usual sign-manual, Maître Mathias looked first at his client and then at Madame Evangelista, and observing that Paul did not ask for the diamonds, he said:

“I suppose there will be no question as to the delivery of the diamonds now that you are but one family?”

“It would, no doubt, be in order that Madame Evangelista should surrender them. Monsieur de Manerville has given his discharge for the balance of the trust values, and no one can tell who may die or live,” said Maître Solonet, who thought this an opportunity for inciting his client against her son-in-law.

“Oh, my dear mother, it would be an affront to us if you did so!” cried Paul. “Summum jus, summa injuria, monsieur,” said he to Solonet.

“And I, on my part,” said she, her hostile temper regarding Mathias’ indirect demand as an insult, “if you do not accept the jewels, will tear up the contract.”

She went out of the room in one of those bloodthirsty furies which so long for the chance of wrecking everything, and which, when that is impossible, rise to the pitch of frenzy.

“In Heaven’s name, take them,” whispered Natalie. “My mother is angry; I will find out why this evening, and will tell you; we will pacify her.”

Madame Evangelista, quite pleased at this first stroke of policy, kept on her necklace and earrings. She brought the rest of the jewels, valued by Élie Magus at a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Maître Mathias and Solonet, though accustomed to handling family diamonds, exclaimed at the beauty of these jewels as they examined the contents of the cases.

“You will lose nothing of mademoiselle’s fortune, Monsieur le Comte,” said Solonet, and Paul reddened.

“Ay,” said Mathias, “these jewels will certainly pay the first instalment of the newly purchased land.”

“And the expenses of the contract,” said Solonet.

Hatred, like love, is fed on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the one we love can do no wrong, the one we hate can do nothing right. Madame Evangelista scorned the hesitancy to which a natural reluctance gave rise in Paul as affected airs; while he, not knowing what to do with the jewel-cases, would have been glad to throw them out of the window. Madame Evangelista, seeing his embarrassment, fixed her eyes on him in a way which seemed to say, “Take them out of my sight!”

“My dear Natalie,” said Paul to his fiancée, “put the jewels away yourself; they are yours; I make them a present to you.”

Natalie put them into the drawers of a cabinet. At this instant the clatter of carriages and the voices of the guests waiting in the adjoining rooms required Natalie and her mother to appear among them. The rooms were immediately filled, and the ball began.

“Take advantage of the honeymoon to sell your diamonds,” said the old notary to Paul, as he withdrew.

While waiting for the dancing to begin, everybody was discussing the marriage in lowered tones, some of the company expressing doubts as to the future prospects of the engaged couple.

“Is it quite settled?” said one of the magnates of the town to Madame Evangelista.

“We have had so many papers to read and hear read, that we are late; but we may be excused,” replied she.

“For my part, I heard nothing,” said Natalie, taking Paul’s hand to open the ball.

“Both those young people like extravagance, and it will not be the mother that will check them,” said a dowager.

“But they have created an entail, I hear, of fifty thousand francs a year.”

“Pooh!”

“I see that our good Maître Mathias has had a finger in the pie. And certainly, if that is the case, the worthy man will have done his best to save the future fortunes of the family.”

“Natalie is too handsome not to be a desperate flirt. By the time that she has been married two years, I will not answer for it that Manerville will not be miserable in his home,” remarked a young wife.

“What, the peas will be stuck you think?” replied Maître Solonet.

“He needed no more than that tall stick,” said a young lady.

“Does it not strike you that Madame Evangelista is not best pleased?”

“Well, my dear, I have just been told that she has hardly twenty-five thousand francs a year, and what is that for her?”

“Beggary, my dear.”

“Yes, she has stripped herself for her daughter. Monsieur has been exacting—”

“Beyond conception!” said Solonet. “But he is to be a peer of France. The Maulincours and the Vidame de Pamiers will help him on; he belongs to the Faubourg Saint-Germain.”

“Oh, he visits there, that is all,” said a lady, who had wanted him for her son-in-law. “Mademoiselle Evangelista, a merchant’s daughter, will certainly not open the doors of the Chapter of Cologne to him.”

“She is grandniece to the Duc de Casa-Real.”

“On the female side!”

All this tittle-tattle was soon exhausted. The gamblers sat down to cards, the young people danced, supper was served, and the turmoil of festivity was not silenced till morning, when the first streaks of dawn shone pale through the windows.

After taking leave of Paul, who was the last to leave, Madame Evangelista went up to her daughter’s room, for her own had been demolished by the builder to enlarge the ballroom. Though Natalie and her mother were dying for sleep, they spoke a few words.

“Tell me, darling mother, what is the matter?”

“My dear, I discovered this evening how far a mother’s love may carry her. You know nothing of affairs, and you have no idea to what suspicions my honesty lies exposed. However, I have trodden my pride underfoot; your happiness and our honor was at stake.”

“As concerned the diamonds, you mean?—He wept over it, poor boy! He would not take them; I have them.”

“Well, go to sleep, dearest child. We will talk business when we wake; for we have business—and now there is a third to come between us,” and she sighed.

“Indeed, dear mother, Paul will never stand in the way of our happiness,” said Natalie, and she went to sleep.

“Poor child, she does not know that the man has ruined her!”

Madame Evangelista was now seized in the grip of the first promptings of that avarice to which old folks at last fall a prey. She was determined to replace, for her daughter’s benefit, the whole of the fortune left by her husband. She regarded her honor as pledged to this restitution. Her affection for Natalie made her in an instant as close a calculator in money matters as she had hitherto been a reckless spendthrift. She proposed to invest her capital in land after placing part of it in the State funds, purchasable at that time for about eighty francs.

A passion not unfrequently produces a complete change of character; the tattler turns diplomatic, the coward is suddenly brave. Hatred made the prodigal Madame Evangelista turn parsimonious. Money might help her in the schemes of revenge, as yet vague and ill-defined, which she proposed to elaborate. She went to sleep, saying to herself:

“Tomorrow!” And by an unexplained phenomenon, of which the effects are well known to philosophers, her brain during sleep worked out her idea, threw light on her plans, organized them, and hit on a way of ruling over Paul’s life, devising a scheme which she began to work out on the very next day.

Though the excitement of the evening had driven away certain anxious thoughts which had now and again invaded Paul, when he was alone once more and in bed they returned to torment him.

“It would seem,” said he to himself, “that, but for that worthy Mathias, my mother-in-law would have taken me in. Is it credible? What interest could she have had in cheating me? Are we not to unite our incomes and live together!—After all, what is there to be anxious about? In a few days Natalie will be my wife, our interests are clearly defined, nothing can sever us. On we go!—At the same time, I will be on my guard. If Mathias should prove to be right—well, I am not obliged to marry my mother-in-law.”

In this second contest, Paul’s future prospects had been entirely altered without his being aware of it. Of the two women he was marrying, far the cleverer had become his mortal enemy, and was bent on separating her own interests from his. Being incapable of appreciating the difference that the fact of her Creole birth made between his mother-in-law’s character and that of other women, he was still less able to measure her immense cleverness.

The Creole woman is a being apart, deriving her intellect from Europe, and from the Tropics her vehemently illogical passions, while she is Indian in the apathetic indifference with which she accepts good or evil as it comes; a gracious nature too, but dangerous, as a child is when it is not kept in order. Like a child, this woman must have everything she wishes for, and at once; like a child, she would set a house on fire to boil an egg. In her flaccid everyday mood she thinks of nothing; when she is in a passion she thinks of everything. There is in her nature some touch of the perfidy caught from the Negroes among whom she has lived from the cradle, but she is artless too, as they are. Like them, and like children, she can wish persistently for one thing with ever-growing intensity of desire, and brood over an idea till it hatches out. It is a nature strangely compounded of good and evil qualities; and in Madame Evangelista it was strengthened by the Spanish temper, over which French manners had laid the polish of their veneer.

This nature, which had lain dormant in happiness for sixteen years, and had since found occupation in the frivolities of fashion, had discovered its own force under the first impulse of hatred, and flared up like a conflagration; it had broken out at a stage in her life when a woman, bereft of what is dearest to her, craves some new material to feed the energies that are consuming her.

For three days longer Natalie would remain under her mother’s influence. So Madame Evangelista, though vanquished, had still a day before her, the last her child would spend with her mother. By a single word the Creole might color the lives of these two beings whose fate it was to walk hand in hand through the thickets and highways of Paris society—for Natalie had a blind belief in her mother. What far-reaching importance would a hint of advice have on a mind thus prepared! The whole future might be modified by a sentence. No code, no human constitution can forefend the moral crime of killing by a word. That is the weak point of social forms of justice. That is where the difference lies between the world of fashion and the people; these are outspoken, those are hypocrites; these snatch the knife, those use the poison of words and suggestions; these are punished with death, those sin with impunity.

At about noon next day, Madame Evangelista was half sitting, half reclining on Natalie’s bed. At this waking hour they were playing and petting each other with fond caresses, recalling the happy memories of their life together, during which no discord had troubled the harmony of their feelings, the agreement of their ideas, or the perfect union of their pleasures.

“Poor dear child,” said the mother, shedding genuine tears, “I cannot bear to think that, after having had your own way all your life, tomorrow evening you will be bound to a man whom you must obey!”

“Oh, my dear mother, as to obeying him!” said Natalie, with a little wilful nod expressive of pretty rebellion. “You laugh!” she went on, “but my father always indulged your fancies. And why? Because he loved you. Shall not I be loved?”

“Yes, Paul is in love with you. But if a married woman is not careful, nothing evaporates so quickly as conjugal affection. The influence a wife may preserve over her husband depends on the first steps in married life, and you will want good advice.”

“But you will be with us.”

“Perhaps, my dear child.—Last evening, during the ball, I very seriously considered the risks of our being together. If my presence were to be disadvantageous to you, if the little details by which you must gradually confirm your authority as a wife should be ascribed to my influence, your home would become a hell. At the first frown on your husband’s brow, should not I, so proud as I am, instantly quit the house? If I am to leave it sooner or later, in my opinion, I had better never enter it. I could not forgive your husband if he disunited us.

“On the other hand, when you are the mistress, when your husband is to you what your father was to me, there will be less fear of any such misfortune. Although such a policy must be painful to a heart so young and tender as yours, it is indispensable for your happiness that you should be the absolute sovereign of your home.”

“Why, then, dear mother, did you say I was to obey him?”

“Dear little girl, to enable a woman to command, she must seem always to do what her husband wishes. If you did not know that, you might wreck your future life by an untimely rebellion. Paul is a weak man; he might come under the influence of a friend, nay, he might fall under the control of a woman, and you would feel the effects of their influence. Forefend such misfortunes by being mistress yourself. Will it not be better that you should govern him than that anyone else should?”

“No doubt,” said Natalie. “I could only aim at his happiness.”

“And it certainly is my part, dear child, to think only of yours, and to endeavor that, in so serious a matter, you should not find yourself without a compass in the midst of the shoals you must navigate.”

“But, my darling mother, are we not both of us firm enough to remain together under his roof without provoking the frowns you seem so much to dread? Paul is fond of you, mamma.”

“Oh, he fears me more than he loves me. Watch him narrowly today when I tell him I shall leave you to go to Paris without me, and, however carefully he may try to conceal his feelings, you will see his secret satisfaction in his face.”

“But why?” said Natalie.

“Why, my child? I am like Saint John Chrysostom—I will tell him why, and before you.”

“But since I am marrying him on the express condition that you and I are not to part?” said Natalie.

“Our separation has become necessary,” Madame Evangelista replied. “Several considerations affect my future prospects. I am very poor. You will have a splendid life in Paris; I could not live with you suitably without exhausting the little possessions that remain to me; whereas, by living at Lanstrac, I can take care of your interests and reconstitute my own fortune by economy.”

“You, mother! you economize?” cried Natalie, laughing. “Come, do not be a grandmother yet.—What, would you part from me for such a reason as that?—Dear mother, Paul may seem to you just a little stupid, but at least he is perfectly disinterested—”

“Well,” replied Madame Evangelista, in a tone big with comment, which made Natalie’s heart beat, “the discussion of the contract had made me suspicious and suggested some doubts to my mind.—But do not be uneasy, dearest child,” she went on, putting her arm round the girl’s neck and clasping her closely, “I will not leave you alone for long. When my return to you can give him no umbrage, when Paul has learned to judge me truly, we will go back to our snug little life again, our evening chats—”

“Why, mother, can you live without your Ninie?”

“Yes, my darling, because I shall be living for you. Will not my motherly heart be constantly rejoiced by the idea that I am contributing, as I ought, to your fortune and your husband’s?”

“But, my dear, adorable mother, am I to be alone there with Paul? At once?—Quite alone?—What will become of me? What will happen? What ought I to do—or not to do?”

“Poor child, do you think I mean to desert you forthwith at the first battle? We will write to each other three times a week, like two lovers, and thus we shall always live in each other’s heart. Nothing can happen to you that I shall not know, and I will protect you against all evil.—And besides, it would be too ridiculous that I should not go to visit you; that would cast a reflection on your husband; I shall always spend a month or two with you in Paris—”

“Alone—alone with him, and at once!” cried Natalie in terror, interrupting her mother.

“Are you not to be his wife?”

“Yes, and I am quite content; but tell me at least how to behave.—You, who did what you would with my father, know all about it, and I will obey you blindly.”

Madame Evangelista kissed her daughter’s forehead; she had been hoping and waiting for this request.

“My child, my advice must be adapted to the circumstances. Men are not all alike. The lion and the frog are less dissimilar than one man as compared with another, morally speaking. Do I know what will happen to you tomorrow? I can only give you general instructions as to your general plan of conduct.”

“Dearest mother, tell me at once all you know.”

“In the first place, my dear child, the cause of ruin to married women who would gladly retain their husband’s heart—and,” she added, as a parenthesis, “to retain their affection and to rule the man are one and the same thing—well, the chief cause of matrimonial differences lies in the unbroken companionship, which did not subsist in former days, and which was introduced into this country with the mania for family life. Ever since the Revolution vulgar notions have invaded aristocratic households. This misfortune is attributable to one of their writers, Rousseau, a base heretic, who had none but reactionary ideas, and who—how I know not—argued out the most irrational conclusions. He asserted that all women have the same rights and the same faculties; that under the conditions of social life the laws of Nature must be obeyed—as if the wife of a Spanish Grandee—as if you or I—had anything in common with a woman of the people. And since then women of rank have nursed their own children, have brought up their daughters, and lived at home.

“Life has thus been made so complicated that happiness is almost impossible; for such an agreement of two characters as has enabled you and me to live together as friends is a rare exception. And perpetual friction is not less to be avoided between parents and children than between husband and wife. There are few natures in which love can survive in spite of omnipresence; that miracle is the prerogative of God.

“So, place the barriers of society between you and Paul; go to balls, to the opera, drive out in the morning, dine out in the evening, pay visits; do not give Paul more than a few minutes of your time. By this system you will never lose your value in his eyes. When two beings have nothing but sentiment to go through life on, they soon exhaust its resources, and ere long satiety and disgust ensue. Then, when once the sentiment is blighted, what is to be done? Make no mistake; when love is extinct, only indifference or contempt ever fills its place. So be always fresh and new to him. If he bores you—that may occur—at any rate, never bore him. To submit to boredom on occasion is one of the conditions of every form of power. You will have no occasion to vary your happiness either by thrift in money matters or the management of a household; hence, if you do not lead your husband to share your outside pleasures, if you do not amuse him, in short, you will sink into the most crushing lethargy. Then begins the spleen of love. But we always love those who amuse us or make us happy. To give and to receive happiness are two systems of wifely conduct between which a gulf lies.”

“Dear mother, I am listening, but I do not understand.”

“If you love Paul so blindly as to do everything he desires, and if he makes you really happy, there is an end of it; you will never be the mistress, and the wisest precepts in the world will be of no use.”

“That is rather clearer; but I learn the rule without knowing how to apply it,” said Natalie, laughing. “Well, I have the theory, and practice will follow.”

“My poor Ninie,” said her mother, dropping a sincere tear as she thought of her daughter’s marriage and pressed her to her heart, “events will strengthen your memory.—In short, my Natalie,” said she after a pause, during which they sat clasped in a sympathetic embrace, “you will learn that each of us, as a woman, has her destiny, just as every man has his vocation. A woman is born to be a woman of fashion, the charming mistress of her house, just as a man is born to be a General or a poet. Your calling in life is to attract. And your education has fitted you for the world. In these days a woman ought to be brought up to grace a drawing-room, as of old she was brought up for the Gynecaeum. You, child, were never made to be the mother of a family or a notable housekeeper.

“If you have children, I hope they will not come to spoil your figure as soon as you are married. Nothing can be more vulgar—and besides, it casts reflections on your husband’s love for you. Well, if you have children two or three years hence, you will have nurses and tutors to bring them up. You must always be the great lady, representing the wealth and pleasures of the house; but only show your superiority in such things as flatter men’s vanity, and hide any superiority you may acquire in serious matters.”

“You frighten me, mamma!” cried Natalie. “How am I ever to remember all your instructions? How am I, heedless and childish as I know I am, to reckon on results and always reflect before acting?”

“My darling child, I am only telling you now what you would learn for yourself later, paying for experience by wretched mistakes, by misguided conduct, which would cause you many regrets and hamper your life.”

“But how am I to begin?” asked Natalie artlessly.

“Instinct will guide you,” said her mother. “What Paul feels for you at this moment is far more desire than love; for the love to which desire gives rise is hope, and that which follows its gratification is realization. There, my dear, lies your power, there is the heart of the question. What woman is not loved the day before marriage? Be still loved the day after, and you will be loved for life. Paul is weak; he will be easily formed by habit; if he yields once, he will yield always. A woman not yet won may insist on anything. Do not commit the folly I have seen in so many wives, who, not knowing the importance of the first hours of their sovereignty, waste them in folly, in aimless absurdities. Make use of the dominion given you by your husband’s first passion to accustom him to obey you. And to break him in, choose the most unreasonable thing possible, so as to gauge the extent of your power by the extent of his concession. What merit would there be in making him agree to what is reasonable? Would that be obeying you? ‘Always take a bull by the horns,’ says a Castilian proverb. When once he sees the uselessness of his weapons and his strength, he is conquered. If your husband commits a folly for your sake, you will master him.”

“Good Heavens! But why?”

“Because, my child, marriage is for life, and a husband is not like any other man. So never be so foolish as to give way in anything whatever. Always be strictly reserved in your speech and actions; you may even go to the point of coldness, for that may be modified at pleasure, while there is nothing beyond the most vehement expressions of love. A husband, my dear, is the only man to whom a woman must grant no license.

“And, after all, nothing is easier than to preserve your dignity. The simple words, ‘Your wife must not, or cannot do this thing or that,’ are the great talisman. A woman’s whole life is wrapped up in ‘I will not!—I cannot!’—‘I cannot’ is the irresistible appeal of weakness which succumbs, weeps, and wins. ‘I will not’ is the last resort. It is the crowning effort of feminine strength; it should never be used but on great occasions. Success depends entirely on the way in which a woman uses these two words, works on them, and varies them.

“But there is a better method of rule than these, which sometimes involve a contest. I, my child, governed by faith. If your husband believes in you, you may do anything. To inspire him with this religion, you must convince him that you understand him. And do not think that this is such an easy matter. A woman can always prove that she loves a man, but it is more difficult to get him to confess that she has understood him. I must tell you everything, my child; for, to you, life with all its complications, a life in which two wills are to be reconciled and harmonized, will begin tomorrow. Do you realize the difficulty? The best way to bring two wills into agreement is to take care that there is but one in the house. People often say that a woman makes trouble for herself by this inversion of the parts; but, my dear, the wife is thus in a position to command events instead of submitting to them, and that single advantage counterbalances every possible disadvantage.”

Natalie kissed her mother’s hands, on which she left her tears of gratitude. Like all women in whom physical passion does not fire the passion of the soul, she suddenly took in all the bearings of this lofty feminine policy. Still, like spoilt children who will never admit that they are beaten even by the soundest reasoning, but who reiterate their obstinate demands, she returned to the charge with one of those personal arguments that are suggested by the logical rectitude of children.

“My dear mother, a few days ago you said so much about the necessary arrangements for Paul’s fortune, which you alone could manage; why have you changed your views in thus leaving us to ourselves?”

“I did not then know the extent of my indebtedness to you, nor how much I owed,” replied her mother, who would not confess her secret. “Besides, in a year or two I can give you my answer.

“Now, Paul will be here directly. We must dress. Be as coaxing and sweet, you know, as you were that evening when we discussed that ill-starred contract, for today I am bent on saving a relic of the family, and on giving you a thing to which I am superstitiously attached.”

“What is that?”

“The Discreto.”

Paul appeared at about four o’clock. Though, when addressing his mother, he did his utmost to seem gracious, Madame Evangelista saw on his brow the clouds which his cogitations of the night and reflections on waking had gathered there.

“Mathias has told him,” thought she, vowing that she would undo the old lawyer’s work.

“My dear boy,” she said, “you have left your diamonds in the cabinet drawer, and I honestly confess that I never want to see the things again which so nearly raised a storm between us. Besides, as Mathias remarked, they must be sold to provide for the first instalment of payment on the lands you have purchased.”

“The diamonds are not mine,” rejoined Paul. “I gave them to Natalie, so that when you see her wear them you may never more remember the trouble they have caused you.”

Madame Evangelista took Paul’s hand and pressed it cordially, while restraining a sentimental tear.

“Listen, my dear, good children,” said she, looking at Natalie and Paul. “If this is so, I will propose to make a bargain with you. I am obliged to sell my pearl necklace and earrings. Yes, Paul; I will not invest a farthing in an annuity; I do not forget my duties to you. Well, I confess my weakness, but to sell the Discreto seems to me to portend disaster. To part with a diamond known to have belonged to Philip II, to have graced his royal hand—a historical gem which the Duke of Alva played with for ten years on the hilt of his sword—no, it shall never be. Élie Magus valued my necklace and earrings at a hundred odd thousand francs; let us exchange them for the jewels I have handed over to you to cancel my debts to my daughter; you will gain a little, but what do I care; I am not grasping. And then, Paul, out of your savings you can have the pleasure of procuring a diadem or hairpins for Natalie, a diamond at a time. Instead of having one of those fancy sets, trinkets which are in fashion only among second-rate people, your wife will thus have magnificent stones that will give her real pleasure. If something must be sold, is it not better to get rid of these old-fashioned jewels, and keep the really fine things in the family?”

“But you, my dear mother?” said Paul.

“I,” replied Madame Evangelista, “I want nothing now. No, I am going to be your farm-bailiff at Lanstrac. Would it not be sheer folly to go to Paris just when I have to wind up my affairs here? I am going to be avaricious for my grandchildren.”

“Dear mother,” said Paul, much touched, “ought I to accept this exchange without compensation?”

“Dear Heaven! are you not my nearest and dearest? Do you think that I shall find no happiness when I sit by my fire and say to myself, ‘Natalie is gone in splendor tonight to the Duchesse de Berri’s ball. When she sees herself with my diamond at her throat, my earrings in her ears, she will have those little pleasures of self-satisfaction which add so much to a woman’s enjoyment, and make her gay and attractive.’—Nothing crushes a woman so much as the chafing of her vanity. I never saw a badly-dressed woman look amiable and pleasant. Be honest, Paul! we enjoy much more through the one we love than in any pleasure of our own.”

“What on earth was Mathias driving at?” thought Paul. “Well, mother,” said he, in a low voice, “I accept.”

“I am quite overpowered,” said Natalie.

Just now Solonet came in with good news for his client. He had found two speculators of his acquaintance, builders, who were much tempted by the house, as the extent of the grounds afforded good building land.

“They are prepared to pay two hundred and fifty thousand francs,” said he; “but if you are ready to sell, I could bring them up to three hundred thousand. You have two acres of garden.”

“My husband paid two hundred thousand for the whole thing,” said she, “so I agree; but you will not include the furniture or the mirrors.”

“Ah, ha!” said Solonet, with a laugh, “you understand business.”

“Alas! needs must,” said she, with a sigh.

“I hear that a great many persons are coming to your midnight ceremony,” said Solonet, who, finding himself in the way, bowed himself out.

Madame Evangelista went with him as far as the door of the outer drawing-room, and said to him privately:

“I have now property representing two hundred and fifty thousand francs; if I get two hundred thousand francs for myself out of the price of the house, I can command a capital of four hundred and fifty thousand francs. I want to invest it to the best advantage, and I trust to you to do it. I shall most likely remain at Lanstrac.”

The young lawyer kissed his client’s hand with a bow of gratitude, for the widow’s tone led him to believe that this alliance, strengthened by interest, might even go a little further.

“You may depend on me,” said he. “I will find you trade investments, in which you will risk nothing, and make large profits.”

“Well—till tomorrow,” said she; “for you and Monsieur le Marquis de Gyas are going to sign for us.”

“Why, dear mother, do you refuse to come with us to Paris?” asked Paul. “Natalie is as much vexed with me as if I were the cause of your determination.”

“I have thought it well over, my children, and I should be in your way. You would think yourselves obliged to include me as a third in everything you might do, and young people have notions of their own which I might involuntarily oppose. Go to Paris by yourselves.—I do not propose to exercise over the Comtesse de Manerville the mild dominion I held over Natalie. I must leave her entirely to you. There are habits which she and I share, you see, Paul, and which must be broken. My influence must give way to yours. I wish you to be attached to me; believe me, I have your interests at heart more than you think perhaps. Young husbands, sooner or later, are jealous of a wife’s affection for her mother. Perhaps they are right. When you are entirely united, when love has amalgamated your souls into one—then, my dear boy, you will have no fears of an adverse influence when you see me under your roof.

“I know the world, men and things; I have seen many a household rendered unhappy by the blind affection of a mother who made herself intolerable, as much to her daughter as to her son-in-law. The affection of old people is often petty and vexatious; perhaps I should not succeed in effacing myself. I am weak enough to think myself handsome still; some flatterers try to persuade me that I am lovable, and I might assume an inconvenient prominence. Let me make one more sacrifice to your happiness.—I have given you my fortune; well, now I surrender my last womanly vanities.—Your good father Mathias is growing old; he cannot look after your estates. I will constitute myself your bailiff. I shall make such occupation for myself as old folks must sooner or later fall back on; then, when you need me, I will go to Paris and help in your plans of ambition.

“Come, Paul, be honest; this arrangement is to your mind? Answer.”

Paul would not admit it, but he was very glad to be free. The suspicions as to his mother-in-law’s character, implanted in his mind by the old notary, were dispelled by this conversation, which Madame Evangelista continued to the same effect.

“My mother was right,” thought Natalie, who was watching Paul’s expression. “He is really glad to see me parted from her.—But why?”

Was not this Why? the first query of suspicion, and did it not add considerable weight to her mother’s instructions?

There are some natures who, on the strength of a single proof, can believe in friendship. In such folks as these the north wind blows away clouds as fast as the west wind brings them up; they are content with effects, and do not look for the causes. Paul’s was one of these essentially confiding characters, devoid of ill-feeling, and no less devoid of foresight. His weakness was the outcome of kindness and a belief in goodness in others, far more than of want of strength of mind.

Natalie was pensive and sad; she did not know how to do without her mother. Paul, with the sort of fatuity that love can produce, laughed at his bride’s melancholy mood, promising himself that the pleasures of married life and the excitement of Paris would dissipate it. It was with marked satisfaction that Madame Evangelista encouraged Paul in his confidence, for the first condition of revenge is dissimulation. Overt hatred is powerless.

The Creole lady had made two long strides already. Her daughter had possession of splendid jewels which had cost Paul two hundred thousand francs, and to which he would, no doubt, add more. Then, she was leaving the two young people to themselves, with no guidance but unregulated love. Thus she had laid the foundations of revenge of which her daughter knew nothing, though sooner or later she would be accessory to it.

Now, would Natalie love Paul?—This was as yet an unanswered question, of which the issue would modify Madame Evangelista’s schemes; for she was too sincerely fond of her daughter not to be tender of her happiness. Thus Paul’s future life depended on himself. If he could make his wife love him, he would be saved.

Finally, on the following night, after an evening spent with the four witnesses whom Madame Evangelista had invited to the lengthy dinner which followed the legal ceremony, at midnight the young couple and their friends attended mass by the light of blazing tapers in the presence of above a hundred curious spectators.

A wedding celebrated at night always seems of ill omen; daylight is a symbol of life and enjoyment, and its happy augury is lacking. Ask the staunchest spirit the cause of this chill, why the dark vault depresses the nerves, why the sound of footsteps is so startling, why the cry of owls and bats is so strangely audible. Though there is no reason for alarm, everyone quakes; darkness, the forecast of death, is crushing to the spirit.

Natalie, torn from her mother, was weeping. The girl was tormented by all the doubts which clutch the heart on the threshold of a new life, where, in spite of every promise of happiness, there are a thousand pitfalls for a woman’s feet. She shivered with cold, and had to put on a cloak.

Madame Evangelista’s manner and that of the young couple gave rise to comments among the elegant crowd that stood round the altar.

“Solonet tells me that the young people go off to Paris tomorrow morning alone.”

“Madame Evangelista was to have gone to live with them.”

“Count Paul has got rid of her!”

“What a mistake!” said the Marquise de Gyas. “The man who shuts his door on his mother-in-law opens it to a lover. Does he not know all that a mother is?”

“He has been very hard on Madame Evangelista. The poor woman has had to sell her house, and is going to live at Lanstrac.”

“Natalie is very unhappy.”

“Well, would you like to spend the day after your wedding on the highroad?”

“It is very uncomfortable.”

“I am glad I came,” said another lady, “to convince myself of the necessity of surrounding a wedding with all the usual ceremonies and festivities, for this seems to me very cold and dismal. Indeed, if I were to tell the whole truth,” she whispered, leaning over to her neighbor, “it strikes me as altogether unseemly.”

Madame Evangelista took Natalie in her own carriage to Count Paul’s house.

“Well, mother, it is all over—”

“Remember my advice, and you will be happy. Always be his wife, and not his mistress.”

When Natalie had gone to her room, Madame Evangelista went through the little farce of throwing herself into her son-in-law’s arms and weeping on his shoulder. It was the only provincial detail Madame Evangelista had allowed herself; but she had her reasons. In the midst of her apparently wild and desperate tears and speeches, she extracted from Paul such concessions as a husband will always make.

The next day she saw the young people into their chaise, and accompanied them across the ferry over the Gironde. Natalie, in a word, had made her mother understand that if Paul had won in the game concerning the contract, her revenge was beginning. Natalie had already reduced her husband to perfect obedience.

Conclusion

Five years after this, one afternoon in November, the Comte Paul de Manerville, wrapped in a cloak, with a bowed head, mysteriously arrived at the house of Monsieur Mathias at Bordeaux. The worthy man, too old now to attend to business, had sold his connection, and was peacefully ending his days in one of his houses.

Important business had taken him out at the time when his visitor called; but his old housekeeper, warned of Paul’s advent, showed him into the room that had belonged to Madame Mathias, who had died a year since.

Paul, tired out by a hurried journey, slept till late. The old man, on his return, came to look at his erewhile client, and was satisfied to look at him lying asleep, as a mother looks at her child. Josette, the housekeeper, came in with her master, and stood by the bedside, her hands on her hips.

“This day twelvemonth, Josette, when my dear wife breathed her last in this bed, I little thought of seeing Monsieur le Comte here looking like death.”

“Poor gentleman! he groans in his sleep,” said Josette.

The old lawyer made no reply but “Sac à papier!”—an innocent oath, which, from him, always represented the despair of a man of business in the face of some insuperable dilemma.

“At any rate,” thought he, “I have saved the freehold of Lanstrac, Auzac, Saint-Froult, and his town house here.”

Mathias counted on his fingers and exclaimed, “Five years!—Yes, it is five years this very month since his old aunt, now deceased, the venerable Madame de Maulincour, asked on his behalf for the hand of that little crocodile in woman’s skirt’s who has managed to ruin him—as I knew she would!”

After looking at the young man for some time, the good old man, now very gouty, went away, leaning on his stick, to walk slowly up and down his little garden. At nine o’clock supper was served, for the old man supped; and he was not a little surprised to see Paul come in with a calm brow and an unruffled expression, though perceptibly altered. Though at three-and-thirty the Comte de Manerville looked forty, the change was due solely to mental shocks; physically he was in good health. He went up to his old friend, took his hands, and pressed them affectionately, saying:

“Dear, good Maître Mathias! And you have had your troubles!”

“Mine were in the course of nature, Monsieur le Comte, but yours—”

“We will talk over mine presently at supper.”

“If I had not a son high up in the law, and a married daughter,” said the worthy man, “believe me, Monsieur le Comte, you would have found something more than bare hospitality from old Mathias.—How is it that you have come to Bordeaux just at the time when you may read on every wall bills announcing the seizure and sale of the farms of le Grassol and le Guadet, of the vine land of Bellerose and your house here? I cannot possibly express my grief on seeing those huge posters—I, who for forty years took as much care of your estates as if they were my own; I, who, when I was third clerk under Monsieur Chesneau, my predecessor, transacted the purchase for your mother, and in my young clerk’s hand engrossed the deed of sale on parchment; I, who have the title-deeds safe in my successor’s office; I, who made out all the accounts. Why, I remember you so high—” and the old man held his hand two feet from the floor.

“After being a notary for more than forty years, to see my name printed as large as life in the face of Israel, in the announcement of the seizure and the disposal of the property—you cannot imagine the pain it gives me. As I go along the street and see the folks all reading those horrible yellow bills, I am as much ashamed as if my own ruin and honor were involved. And there are a pack of idiots who spell it all out at the top of their voices on purpose to attract idlers, and they add the most ridiculous comments.

“Are you not master of your own? Your father ran through two fortunes before making the one he left you, and you would not be a Manerville if you did not tread in his steps.

“And besides, the seizure of real property is foreseen in the Code, and provided for under a special capitulum; you are in a position recognized by law. If I were not a white-headed old man, only waiting for a nudge to push me into the grave, I would thrash the men who stand staring at such abominations—‘At the suit of Madame Natalie Evangelista, wife of Paul François Joseph Comte de Manerville, of separate estate by the ruling of the lower Court of the Department of the Seine,’ and so forth.”

“Yes,” said Paul, “and now separate in bed and board—”

“Indeed!” said the old man.

“Oh! against Natalie’s will,” said the Count quickly. “I had to deceive her. She does not know that I am going away.”

“Going away?”

“My passage is taken; I sail on the Belle-Amélie for Calcutta.”

“In two days!” said Mathias. “Then we meet no more, Monsieur le Comte.”

“You are but seventy-three, my dear Mathias, and you have the gout, an assurance of old age. When I come back I shall find you just where you are. Your sound brain and heart will be as good as ever; you will help me to rebuild the ruined home. I mean to make a fine fortune in seven years. On my return I shall only be forty. At that age everything is still possible.”

“You, Monsieur le Comte!” exclaimed Mathias, with a gesture of amazement. “You are going into trade!—What are you thinking of?”

“I am no longer Monsieur le Comte, dear Mathias. I have taken my passage in the name of Camille, a Christian name of my mother’s. And I have some connections which may enable me to make a fortune in other ways. Trade will be my last resource. Also, I am starting with a large enough sum of money to allow of my tempting fortune on a grand scale.”

“Where is that money?”

“A friend will send it to me.”

The old man dropped his fork at the sound of the word “friend,” not out of irony or surprise; his face expressed his grief at finding Paul under the influence of a delusion, for his eye saw a void where the Count perceived a solid plank.

“I have been in a notary’s office more than fifty years,” said he, “and I never knew a ruined man who had friends willing to lend him money.”

“You do not know de Marsay. At this minute, while I speak to you, I am perfectly certain that he has sold out of the funds if it was necessary, and tomorrow you will receive a bill of exchange for fifty thousand crowns.”

“I only hope so.—But then could not this friend have set your affairs straight? You could have lived quietly at Lanstrac for five or six years on Madame la Comtesse’s income.”

“And would an assignment have paid fifteen hundred thousand francs of debts, of which my wife’s share was five hundred and fifty thousand?”

“And how, in four years, have you managed to owe fourteen hundred and fifty thousand francs?”

“Nothing can be plainer, my good friend. Did I not make the diamonds a present to my wife? Did I not spend the hundred and fifty thousand francs that came to us from the sale of Madame Evangelista’s house in redecorating my house in Paris? Had I not to pay the price of the land we purchased, and of the legal business of my marriage contract? Finally, had I not to sell Natalie’s forty thousand francs a year in the funds to pay for d’Auzac and Saint-Froult? We sold at 87, so I was in debt about two hundred thousand francs within a month of my marriage.

“An income was left of sixty-seven thousand francs, and we have regularly spent two hundred thousand francs a year beyond it. To these nine hundred thousand francs add certain moneylenders’ interest, and you will easily find it a million.”

“Brrrr,” said the old lawyer. “And then?”

“Well, I wished at once to make up the set of jewels for my wife, of which she already had the pearl necklace and the Discreto clasp—a family jewel—and her mother’s earrings. I paid a hundred thousand francs for a diadem of wheatears. There you see eleven hundred thousand francs. Then I owe my wife the whole of her fortune, amounting to three hundred and fifty-six thousand francs settled on her.”

“But then,” said Mathias, “if Madame la Comtesse had pledged her diamonds, and you your securities, you would have, by my calculations, three hundred thousand with which to pacify your creditors—”

“When a man is down, Mathias; when his estates are loaded with mortgages; when his wife is the first creditor for her settlement; when, to crown all, he is exposed to having writs against him for notes of hand to the tune of a hundred thousand francs—to be paid off, I hope, by good prices at the sales—nothing can be done. And the cost of conveyancing!”

“Frightful!” said the lawyer.

“The distraint has happily taken the form of a voluntary sale, which will mitigate the flare.”

“And you are selling Bellerose with the wines of 1825 in the cellars?”

“I cannot help myself.”

“Bellerose is worth six hundred thousand francs.”

“Natalie will buy it in by my advice.”

“Sixteen thousand francs in ordinary years—and such a season as 1825! I will run Bellerose up to seven hundred thousand francs myself, and each of the farms up to a hundred and twenty thousand.”

“So much the better; then I can clear myself if my house in the town fetches two hundred thousand.”

“Solonet will pay a little more for it; he has a fancy for it. He is retiring on a hundred odd thousand a year, which he has made in gambling in trois-six. He has sold his business for three hundred thousand francs, and is marrying a rich mulatto. God knows where she got her money, but they say she has millions. A notary gambling in trois-six! A notary marrying a mulatto! What times these are! It was he, they say, who looked after your mother-in-law’s investments.”

“She has greatly improved Lanstrac, and taken good care of the land; she has regularly paid her rent.”

“I should never have believed her capable of behaving so.”

“She is so kind and devoted.—She always paid Natalie’s debts when she came to spend three months in Paris.”

“So she very well might, she lives on Lanstrac,” said Mathias. “She! Turned thrifty! What a miracle! She has just bought the estate of Grainrouge, lying between Lanstrac and Grassol, so that if she prolongs the avenue from Lanstrac down to the highroad you can drive a league and a half through your own grounds. She paid a hundred thousand francs down for Grainrouge, which is worth a thousand crowns a year in cash rents.”

“She is still handsome,” said Paul. “Country life keeps her young. I will not go to take leave of her; she would bleed herself for me.”

“You would waste your time; she is gone to Paris. She probably arrived just as you left.”

“She has, of course, heard of the sale of the land, and has rushed to my assistance.—I have no right to complain of life. I am loved as well as any man can be in this world, loved by two women who vie with each other in their devotion to me. They were jealous of each other; the daughter reproached her mother for being too fond of me, and the mother found fault with her daughter for her extravagance. This affection has been my ruin. How can a man help gratifying the lightest wish of the woman he loves? How can he protect himself? And, on the other hand, how can he accept self-sacrifice?—We could, to be sure, pay up with my fortune and come to live at Lanstrac—but I would rather go to India and make my fortune than tear Natalie from the life she loves. It was I myself who proposed to her a separation of goods. Women are angels who ought never to be mixed up with the business of life.”

Old Mathias listened to Paul with an expression of surprise and doubt.

“You have no children?” said he.

“Happily!” replied Paul.

“Well, I view marriage in a different light,” replied the old notary quite simply. “In my opinion, a wife ought to share her husband’s lot for good or ill. I have heard that young married people who are too much like lovers have no families. Is pleasure then the only end of marriage? Is it not rather the happiness of family life? Still, you were but eight-and-twenty, and the Countess no more than twenty; it was excusable that you should think only of lovemaking. At the same time, the terms of your marriage-contract, and your name—you will think me grossly lawyer-like—required you to begin by having a fine handsome boy. Yes, Monsieur le Comte, and if you had daughters, you ought not to have stopped till you had a male heir to succeed you in the entail.

“Was Mademoiselle Evangelista delicate? Was there anything to fear for her in motherhood?—You will say that is very old-fashioned and antiquated; but in noble families, Monsieur le Comte, a legitimate wife ought to have children and bring them up well. As the Duchesse de Sully said—the wife of the great Sully—a wife is not a means of pleasure, but the honor and virtue of the household.”

“You do not know what women are, my dear Mathias,” said Paul. “To be happy, a man must love his wife as she chooses to be loved. And is it not rather brutal to deprive a woman so early of her charms and spoil her beauty before she has really enjoyed it?”

“If you had had a family, the mother would have checked the wife’s dissipation; she would have stayed at home—”

“If you were in the right, my good friend,” said Paul, with a frown, “I should be still more unhappy. Do not aggravate my misery by moralizing over my ruin; let me depart without any after bitterness.”

Next day Mathias received a bill payable at sight for a hundred and fifty thousand francs, signed by de Marsay.

“You see,” said Paul, “he does not write me a word. Henri’s is the most perfectly imperfect, the most unconventionally noble nature I have ever met with. If you could but know how superior this man—who is still young—rises above feeling and interest, and what a great politician he is, you, like me, would be amazed to find what a warm heart he has.”

Mathias tried to reason Paul out of his purpose, but it was irrevocable, and justified by so many practical reasons, that the old notary made no further attempt to detain his client.

Rarely enough does a vessel in cargo sail punctually to the day; but by an accident disastrous to Paul, the wind being favorable, the Belle-Amélie was to sail on the morrow. At the moment of departure the landing-stage is always crowded with relations, friends, and idlers. Among these, as it happened, were several personally acquainted with Manerville. His ruin had made him as famous now as he had once been for his fortune, so there was a stir of curiosity. Everyone had some remark to make.

The old man had escorted Paul to the wharf, and he must have suffered keenly as he heard some of the comments.

“Who would recognize in the man you see there with old Mathias the dandy who used to be called Pease-blossom, and who was the oracle of fashion here at Bordeaux five years since?”

“What, can that fat little man in an alpaca overcoat, looking like a coachman, be the Comte Paul de Manerville?”

“Yes, my dear, the man who married Mademoiselle Evangelista. There he is ruined, without a sou to his name, going to the Indies to look for the roc’s egg.”

“But how was he ruined? He was so rich!”

“Paris—women—the Bourse—gambling—display—”

“And besides,” said another, “Manerville is a poor creature; he has no sense, as limp as papier-maché, allowing himself to be fleeced, and incapable of any decisive action. He was born to be ruined.”

Paul shook his old friend’s hand and took refuge on board. Mathias stood on the quay, looking at his old client, who leaned over the netting, defying the crowd with a look of scorn.

Just as the anchor was weighed, Paul saw that Mathias was signaling to him by waving his handkerchief. The old housekeeper had come in hot haste, and was standing by her master, who seemed greatly excited by some matter of importance. Paul persuaded the captain to wait a few minutes and send a boat to land, that he might know what the old lawyer wanted; he was signaling vigorously, evidently desiring him to disembark. Mathias, too infirm to go to the ship, gave two letters to one of the sailors who were in the boat.

“My good fellow,” said the old notary, showing one of the letters to the sailor, “this letter, mark it well, make no mistake—this packet has just been delivered by a messenger who has ridden from Paris in thirty-five hours. Explain this clearly to Monsieur le Comte, do not forget. It might make him change his plans.”

“And we should have to land him?”

“Yes,” said the lawyer rashly.

The sailor in most parts of the world is a creature apart, professing the deepest contempt for all landlubbers. As to townsfolk, he cannot understand them; he knows nothing about them; he laughs them to scorn; he cheats them if he can without direct dishonesty. This one, as it happened, was a man of Lower Brittany, who saw worthy old Mathias’ instructions in only one light.

“Just so,” he muttered, as he took his oar, “land him again! The captain is to lose a passenger! If we listened to these landlubbers, we should spend our lives in pulling them between the ship and shore. Is he afraid his son will take cold?”

So the sailor gave Paul the letters without any message. On recognizing his wife’s writing and de Marsay’s, Paul imagined all that either of them could have to say to him; and being determined not to risk being influenced by the offers that might be inspired by their regard, he put the letters in his pocket with apparent indifference.

“And that is the rubbish we are kept waiting for! What nonsense!” said the sailor to the captain in his broad Breton. “If the matter were as important as that old guy declared, would Monsieur le Comte drop the papers into his scuppers?”

Paul, lost in the dismal reflections that come over the strongest man in such circumstances, gave himself up to melancholy, while he waved his hand to his old friend, and bid farewell to France, watching the fast disappearing buildings of Bordeaux.

He presently sat down on a coil of rope, and there night found him, lost in meditation. Doubt came upon him as twilight fell; he gazed anxiously into the future; he could see nothing before him but perils and uncertainty, and wondered whether his courage might not fail him. He felt some vague alarm as he thought of Natalie left to herself; he repented of his decision, regretting Paris and his past life.

Then he fell a victim to seasickness. Everyone knows the miseries of this condition, and one of the worst features of its sufferings is the total effacement of will that accompanies it. An inexplicable incapacity loosens all the bonds of vitality at the core; the mind refuses to act, and everything is a matter of total indifference—a mother can forget her child, a lover his mistress; the strongest man becomes a mere inert mass. Paul was carried to his berth, where he remained for three days, alternately violently ill, and plied with grog by the sailors, thinking of nothing or sleeping; then he went through a sort of convalescence and recovered his ordinary health.

On the morning when, finding himself better, he went for a walk on deck to breathe the sea-air of a more southern climate, on putting his hands in his pockets he felt his letters. He at once took them out to read them, and began by Natalie’s. In order that the Comtesse de Manerville’s letter may be fully understood, it is necessary first to give that written by Paul to his wife on leaving Paris.

Paul de Manerville to His Wife.

“My best Beloved—When you read this letter I shall be far from you, probably on the vessel that is to carry me to India, where I am going to repair my shattered fortune. I did not feel that I had the courage to tell you of my departure. I have deceived you; but was it not necessary? You would have pinched yourself to no purpose, you would have wished to sacrifice your own fortune. Dear Natalie, feel no remorse; I shall know no repentance. When I return with millions, I will imitate your father; I will lay them at your feet as he laid his at your mother’s, and will say, ‘It is all yours.’

“I love you to distraction, Natalie; and I can say so without fearing that you will make my avowal a pretext for exerting a power which only weak men dread. Yours was unlimited from the first day I ever saw you. My love alone has led me to disaster; my gradual ruin has brought me the delirious joys of the gambler. As my money diminished my happiness grew greater; each fraction of my wealth converted into some little gratification to you caused me heavenly rapture. I could have wished you to have more caprices than you ever had.

“I knew that I was marching on an abyss, but I went, my brow wreathed with joys and feelings unknown to vulgar souls. I acted like the lovers who shut themselves up for a year or two in a cottage by a lake, vowing to kill themselves after plunging into the ocean of happiness, dying in all the glory of their illusions and their passion. I have always thought such persons eminently rational. You have never known anything of my pleasures or of my sacrifices. And is there not exquisite enjoyment in concealing from the one we love the cost of the things she wishes for?

“I may tell you these secrets now. I shall be far indeed away when you hold this sheet loaded with my love. Though I forego the pleasure of your gratitude, I do not feel that clutch at my heart which would seize me if I tried to talk of these things. Alas, my dearest, there is deep self-interest in thus revealing the past. Is it not to add to the volume of our love in the future? Could it indeed ever need such a stimulus? Do we not feel that pure affection to which proof is needless, which scorns time and distance, and lives in its own strength?

“Ah! Natalie, I just now left the table where I am writing by the fire, and looked at you asleep, calm and trustful, in the attitude of a guileless child, your hand lying where I could take it. I left a tear on the pillow that has been the witness of our happiness. I leave you without a fear on the promise of that attitude; I leave you to win peace by winning a fortune so large that no anxiety may ever disturb our joys, and that you may satisfy your every wish. Neither you nor I could ever dispense with the luxuries of the life we lead. I am a man, and I have courage; mine alone be the task of amassing the fortune we require.

“You might perhaps think of following me! I will not tell you the name of the ship, nor the port I sail from, nor the day I leave. A friend will tell you when it is too late.

“Natalie, my devotion to you is boundless; I love you as a mother loves her child, as a lover worships his mistress, with perfect disinterestedness. The work be mine, the enjoyment yours; mine the sufferings, yours a life of happiness. Amuse yourself; keep up all your habits of luxury; go to the Italiens, to the French opera, into society and to balls; I absolve you beforehand. But, dear angel, each time you come home to the nest where we have enjoyed the fruits that have ripened during our five years of love, remember your lover, think of me for a moment, and sleep in my heart. That is all I ask.

“I—my one, dear, constant thought—when, under scorching skies, working for our future, I find some obstacle to overcome, or when, tired out, I rest in the hope of my return—I shall think of you who are the beauty of my life. Yes, I shall try to live in you, telling myself that you have neither cares nor uneasiness. Just as life is divided into day and night, waking and sleeping, so I shall have my life of enchantment in Paris, my life of labors in India—a dream of anguish, a reality of delight; I shall live so completely in what is real to you that my days will be the dream. I have my memories; canto by canto I shall recall the lovely poem of five years; I shall remember the days when you chose to be dazzling, when by some perfection of evening-dress or morning-wrapper you made yourself new in my eyes. I shall taste on my lips the flavor of our little feasts.

“Yes, dear angel, I am going like a man pledged to some high emprise when by success he is to win his mistress! To me the past will be like the dreams of desire which anticipate realization, and which realization often disappoints. But you have always more than fulfilled them. And I shall return to find a new wife, for will not absence lend you fresh charms?—Oh, my dear love, my Natalie, let me be a religion to you. Be always the child I have seen sleeping! If you were to betray my blind confidence—Natalie, you would not have to fear my anger, of that you may be sure; I should die without a word. But a woman does not deceive the husband who leaves her free, for women are never mean. She may cheat a tyrant; but she does not care for the easy treason which would deal a deathblow. No, I cannot imagine such a thing—forgive me for this cry, natural to a man.

“My dearest, you will see de Marsay; he is now the tenant holding our house, and he will leave you in it. This lease to him was necessary to avoid useless loss. My creditors, not understanding that payment is merely a question of time, might have seized the furniture and the rent of letting the house. Be good to de Marsay; I have the most perfect confidence in his abilities and in his honor. Make him your advocate and your adviser, your familiar. Whatever his engagements may be, he will always be at your service. I have instructed him to keep an eye on the liquidation of my debts; if he should advance a sum of which he presently needed the use, I trust to you to pay him. Remember I am not leaving you to de Marsay’s guidance, but to your own; when I mention him, I do not force him upon you.

“Alas, I cannot begin to write on business matters; only an hour remains to me under the same roof with you. I count your breathing; I try to picture your thoughts from the occasional changes in your sleep, your breathing revives the flowery hours of our early love. At every throb of your heart mine goes forth to you with all its wealth, and I scatter over you the petals of the roses of my soul, as children strew them in front of the altars on Corpus Christi Day. I commend you to the memories I am pouring out on you; I would, if I could, pour my lifeblood into your veins that you might indeed be mine, that your heart might be my heart, your thoughts my thoughts, that I might be wholly in you!—And you utter a little murmur as if in reply!

“Be ever as calm and lovely as you are at this moment. I would I had the fabled power of which we hear in fairy tales, and could leave you thus to sleep during my absence, to wake you on my return with a kiss. What energy, what love, must I feel to leave you when I behold you thus.—You are Spanish and religious; you will observe an oath, taken even in your sleep when your unspoken word was believed in beyond doubt.

“Farewell, my dearest. Your hapless Pease-blossom is swept away by the storm-wind; but it will come back to you forever on the wings of Fortune. Nay, dear Ninie, I will not say farewell, for you will always be with me. Will you not be the soul of my actions? Will not the hope of bringing you such happiness as cannot be wrecked give spirit to my enterprise and guide all my steps? Will you not always be present to me? No, it will not be the tropical sun, but the fire of your eyes, that will light me on my way.

“Be as happy as a woman can be, bereft of her lover.—I should have been glad to have a parting kiss, in which you were not merely passive; but, my Ninie, my adored darling, I would not wake you. When you wake, you will find a tear on your brow; let it be a talisman.—Think, oh! think of him who is perhaps to die for you, far away from you; think of him less as your husband than as a lover who worships you and leaves you in God’s keeping.”

Reply from the Comtesse de Manerville to Her Husband

“My Dearest—What grief your letter has brought me! Had you any right to form a decision which concerns us equally without consulting me? Are you free? Do you not belong to me? And am I not half a Creole? Why should I not follow you?—You have shown me that I am no longer indispensable to you. What have I done, Paul, that you should rob me of my rights? What is to become of me alone in Paris? Poor dear, you assume the blame for any ill I may have done. But am I not partly to blame for this ruin? Has not my finery weighed heavily in the wrong scale? You are making me curse the happy, heedless life we have led these four years. To think of you as exiled for six years! Is it not enough to kill me? How can you make a fortune in six years? Will you ever come back? I was wiser than I knew when I so strenuously opposed the separate maintenance which you and my mother so absolutely insisted on. What did I tell you? That it would expose you to discredit, that it would ruin your credit! You had to be quite angry before I would give in.

“My dear Paul, you have never been so noble in my eyes as you are at this moment. Without a hint of despair, to set out to make a fortune! Only such a character, such energy as yours could take such a step. I kneel at your feet. A man who confesses to weakness in such perfect good faith, who restores his fortune from the same motive that has led him to waste it—for love, for an irresistible passion—oh, Paul, such a man is sublime! Go without fear, trample down every obstacle, and never doubt your Natalie, for it would be doubting yourself. My poor dear, you say you want to live in me? And shall not I always live in you? I shall not be here, but with you wherever you may be.

“Though your letter brought me cruel anguish, it filled me too with joy; in one minute I went through both extremes; for, seeing how much you love me, I was proud too to find that my love was appreciated. Sometimes I have fancied that I loved you more than you loved me; now I confess myself outdone; you may add that delightful superiority to the others you possess; but have I not many more reasons for loving?—Your letter, the precious letter in which your whole soul is revealed, and which so plainly tells me that between you and me nothing is lost, will dwell on my heart during your absence, for your whole soul is in it; that letter is my glory!

“I am going to live with my mother at Lanstrac; I shall there be dead to the world, and shall save out of my income to pay off your debts. From this day forth, Paul, I am another woman; I take leave forever of the world; I will not have a pleasure that you do not share.

“Besides, Paul, I am obliged to leave Paris and live in solitude. Dear boy, you have a twofold reason for making a fortune. If your courage needed a spur, you may now find another heart dwelling in your own. My dear, cannot you guess? We shall have a child. Your dearest hopes will be crowned, monsieur. I would not give you the deceptive joys which are heartbreaking; we have already had so much disappointment on that score, and I was afraid of having to withdraw the glad announcement. But now I am sure of what I am saying, and happy to cast a gleam of joy over your sorrow. This morning, suspecting no evil, I had gone to the Church of the Assumption to return thanks to God. How could I foresee disaster? Everything seemed to smile on me. As I came out of church, I met my mother; she had heard of your distress, and had come by post with all her savings, thirty thousand francs, hoping to be able to arrange matters. What a heart, Paul! I was quite happy; I came home to tell you the two pieces of good news while we breakfasted under the awning in the conservatory, and I had ordered all the dainties you like best.

“Augustine gave me your letter.—A letter from you, when we had slept together! It was a tragedy in itself. I was seized with a shivering fit—then I read it—I read it in tears, and my mother too melted into tears. And a woman must love a man very much to cry over him, crying makes us so ugly.—I was half dead. So much love and so much courage! So much happiness and such great grief! To be unable to clasp you to my heart, my beloved, at the very moment when my admiration for your magnanimity most constrained me! What woman could withstand such a whirlwind of emotions? To think that you were far away when your hand on my heart would have comforted me; that you were not there to give me the look I love so well, to rejoice with me over the realization of our hopes;—and I was not with you to soften your sorrow by the affection which made your Natalie so dear to you, and which can make you forget every grief!

“I wanted to be off to fly at your feet; but my mother pointed out that the Belle-Amélie is to sail tomorrow, that only the post could go fast enough to overtake you, and that it would be the height of folly to risk all our future happiness on a jolt. Though a mother already, I ordered horses, and my mother cheated me into the belief that they would be brought round. She acted wisely, for I was already unfit to move. I could not bear such a combination of violent agitations, and I fainted away. I am writing in bed, for I am ordered perfect rest for some months. Hitherto I have been a frivolous woman, now I mean to be the mother of a family. Providence is good to me, for a child to nurse and bring up can alone alleviate the sorrows of your absence. In it I shall find a second Paul to make much of. I shall thus publicly flaunt the love we have so carefully kept to ourselves. I shall tell the truth.

“My mother has already had occasion to contradict certain calumnies which are current as to your conduct. The two Vandenesses, Charles and Félix, had defended you stoutly, but your friend de Marsay makes game of everything; he laughs at your detractors instead of answering them. I do not like such levity in response to serious attacks. Are you not mistaken in him? However, I will obey and make a friend of him.

“Be quite easy, my dearest, with regard to anything that may affect your honor. Is it not mine?

“I am about to pledge my diamonds. My mother and I shall strain every resource to pay off your debts and try to buy in the vine land of Bellerose. My mother, who is as good a man of business as a regular accountant, blames you for not having been open with her. She would not then have purchased—thinking to give you pleasure—the estate of Grainrouge, which cut in on your lands; and then she could have lent you a hundred and thirty thousand francs. She is in despair at the step you have taken, and is afraid you will suffer from the life in India. She entreats you to be temperate, and not to be led astray by the women!—I laughed in her face. I am as sure of you as of myself. You will come back to me wealthy and faithful. I alone in the world know your womanly refinement and those secret feelings which make you an exquisite human flower, worthy of heaven. The Bordeaux folks had every reason to give you your pretty nickname. And who will take care of my delicate flower? My heart is racked by dreadful ideas. I, his wife, his Natalie, am here, when already perhaps he is suffering! I, so entirely one with you, may not share your troubles, your annoyances, your dangers? In whom can you confide? How can you live without the ear into which you whisper everything? Dear, sensitive plant, swept away by the gale, why should you be transplanted from the only soil in which your fragrance could ever be developed! I feel as if I had been alone for two centuries, and I am cold in Paris! And I have cried so long—

“The cause of your ruin! What a text for the meditations of a woman full of love! You have treated me like a child, to whom nothing is refused that it asks for; like a courtesan, for whom a spendthrift throws away his fortune. Your delicacy, as you style it, is an insult. Do you suppose that I cannot live without fine clothes, balls, operas, successes? Am I such a frivolous woman? Do you think me incapable of a serious thought, of contributing to your fortune as much as I ever contributed to your pleasures? If you were not so far away and ill at ease, you would here find a good scolding for your impertinence. Can you disparage your wife to such an extent? Bless me! What did I go out into society for? To flatter your vanity; it was for you I dressed, and you know it. If I had been wrong, I should be too cruelly punished; your absence is a bitter expiation for our domestic happiness. That happiness was too complete; it could not fail to be paid for by some great sorrow; and here it is! After such delights, so carefully screened from the eyes of the curious; after these constant festivities, varied only by the secret madness of our affection, there is no alternative but solitude. Solitude, my dear one, feeds great passions, and I long for it. What can I do in the world of fashion; to whom should I report my triumphs?

“Ah, to live at Lanstrac, on the estate laid out by your father, in the house you restored so luxuriously—to live there with your child, waiting for you, and sending forth to you night and morning the prayers of the mother and child, of the woman and the angel—will not that be half happiness? Cannot you see the little hands folded in mine? Will you still remember, as I shall remember every evening, the happiness of which your dear letter reminds me? Oh, yes, for we love each other equally. I no more doubt you than you doubt me.

“What consolations can I offer you here, I, who am left desolate, crushed; I, who look forward to the next six years as a desert to be crossed? Well, I am not the most to be pitied, for will not that desert be cheered by our little one? Yes—a boy—I must give you a boy, must I not? So farewell, dearly beloved one, our thoughts and our love will ever follow you. The tears on my paper will tell you much that I cannot express, and take the kisses you will find left here, below my name, by your own

Natalie.”

This letter threw Paul into a daydream, caused no less by the rapture into which he was thrown by these expressions of love than by the reminiscences of happiness thus intentionally called up; and he went over them all, one by one, to account for this promise of a child.

The happier a man is, the greater are his fears. In souls that are exclusively tender—and a tender nature is generally a little weak—jealousy and disquietude are usually in direct proportion to happiness and to its greatness. Strong souls are neither jealous nor easily frightened: jealousy is doubt, and fear is small-minded. Belief without limits is the leading attribute of a high-minded man; if he is deceived—and strength as well as weakness may make him a dupe—his scorn serves him as a hatchet, and he cuts through everything. Such greatness is exceptional. Which of us has not known what it is to be deserted by the spirit that upholds this frail machine, and to hear only the unknown voice that denies everything?

Paul, caught as it were in the toils of certain undeniable facts, doubted and believed both at once. Lost in thought, a prey to terrible but involuntary questionings, and yet struggling with the proofs of true affection and his belief in Natalie, he read this discursive epistle through twice, unable to come to any conclusion for or against his wife. Love may be as great in wordiness as in brevity of expression.

Thoroughly to understand Paul’s frame of mind, he must be seen floating on the ocean as on the wide expanse of the past; looking back on his life as on a cloudless sky, and coming back at last after whirlwinds of doubt to the pure, entire, and untarnished faith of a believer, of a Christian, of a lover convinced by the voice of his heart.

It is now not less necessary to give the letter to which Henri de Marsay’s was a reply.

Le Comte Paul de Manerville to Monsieur le Marquis Henri de Marsay.

“Henri—I am going to tell you one of the greatest things a man can tell a friend: I am ruined. When you read this I shall be starting from Bordeaux for Calcutta on board the good-ship Belle-Amélie. You will find in your notary’s hands a deed which only needs your signature to ratify it, in which I let my house to you for six years on a hypothetical lease; you will write a letter counteracting it to my wife. I am obliged to take this precaution in order that Natalie may remain in her own house without any fear of being turned out of it. I also empower you to draw the income of the entailed property for four years, as against a sum of a hundred and fifty thousand francs that I will beg you to send by a bill, drawn on some house in Bordeaux, to the order of Mathias. My wife will give you her guarantee to enable you to draw the income. If the revenue from the entail should repay you sooner than I imagine, we can settle accounts on my return. The sum I ask of you is indispensable to enable me to set out to seek my fortune; and, if I am not mistaken in you, I shall receive it without delay at Bordeaux the day before I sail. I have acted exactly as you would have acted in my place. I have held out till the last moment without allowing anyone to suspect my position. Then, when the news of the seizure of my salable estates reached Paris, I had raised money by notes of hand to the sum of a hundred thousand francs, to try gambling. Some stroke of luck might reinstate me.—I lost.

“How did I ruin myself? Voluntarily, my dear Henri. From the very first day I saw that I could not go on in the way I started in; I knew what the consequence would be; I persisted in shutting my eyes, for I could not bear to say to my wife, ‘Let us leave Paris and go to live at Lanstrac’ I have ruined myself for her, as a man ruins himself for a mistress, but knowing it.

“Between you and me, I am neither a simpleton nor weak. A simpleton does not allow himself to be governed, with his eyes open, by an absorbing passion; and a man who sets out to reconstitute his fortune in the Indies, instead of blowing his brains out, is a man of spirit. And so, my dear friend, as I care for wealth only for her sake, as I do not wish to be any man’s dupe, and as I shall be absent six years, I place my wife in your keeping. You are enough the favorite of women to respect Natalie, and to give me the benefit of the honest friendship that binds us. I know of no better protector than you will be. I am leaving my wife childless; a lover would be a danger. You must know, my dear de Marsay, I love Natalie desperately, cringingly, and am not ashamed of it. I could, I believe, forgive her if she were unfaithful, not because I am certain that I could be revenged, if I were to die for it! but because I would kill myself to leave her happy if I myself could not make her happy.

“But what have I to fear? Natalie has for me that true regard, independent of love, which preserves love. I have treated her like a spoiled child. I found such perfect happiness in my sacrifices, one led so naturally to the other, that she would be a monster to betray me. Love deserves love.

“Alas! must I tell you the whole truth, my dear Henri? I have just written her a letter in which I have led her to believe that I am setting out full of hope, with a calm face; that I have not a doubt, no jealousy, no fears; such a letter as sons write to deceive a mother when they go forth to die. Good God! de Marsay, I had hell within me, I am the most miserable man on earth. You must hear my cries, my gnashing of the teeth. To you I confess the tears of a despairing lover. Sooner would I sweep the gutter under her window for six years, if it were possible, than return with millions after six years’ absence. I suffer the utmost anguish; I shall go on from sorrow to sorrow till you shall have written me a line to say that you accept a charge which you alone in the world can fulfil and carry out.

“My dear de Marsay, I cannot live without that woman; she is air and sunshine to me. Take her under your aegis, keep her faithful to me—even against her will. Yes, I can still be happy with such half-happiness. Be her protector; I have no fear of you. Show her how vulgar it would be to deceive me; that it would make her like every other woman; that the really brilliant thing will be to remain faithful.

“She must still have money enough to carry on her easy and undisturbed life; but if she should want anything, if she should have a whim, be her banker—do not be afraid, I shall come home rich.

“After all, my alarms are vain, no doubt; Natalie is an angel of virtue. When Félix de Vandenesse fell desperately in love with her and allowed himself to pay her some attentions, I only had to point out the danger to Natalie, and she thanked me so affectionately that I was moved to tears. She said that it would be awkward for her reputation if a man suddenly disappeared from her house, but that she would find means to dismiss him; and she did, in fact, receive him very coldly, so that everything ended well. In four years we have never had any other subject of discussion, if a conversation as between friends can be called a discussion.

“Well, my dear Henri, I must say goodbye like a man. The disaster has come. From whatever cause, there it is; I can but bow to it. Poverty and Natalie are two irreconcilable terms. And the balance of my debts and assets will be very nearly exact; no one will have anything to complain of. Still, in case some unforeseen circumstance should threaten my honor, I trust in you.

“Finally, if any serious event should occur, you can write to me under cover to the Governor-General at Calcutta. I have friends in his household, and someone will take charge of any letters for me that may arrive from Europe. My dear friend, I hope to find you still the same on my return—a man who can make fun of everything, and who is nevertheless alive to the feelings of others when they are in harmony with the noble nature you feel in yourself.

“You can stay in Paris! At the moment when you read this I shall be crying, ‘To Carthage!’ ”

The Marquis Henri de Marsay in Reply to the Comte Paul de Manerville.

“And so, Monsieur le Comte, you have collapsed! Monsieur the Ambassador has turned turtle! Are these the fine things you were doing? Why, Paul, did you keep any secret from me? If you had said but one word, my dear old fellow, I could have thrown light on the matter.

“Your wife refuses her guarantee. That should be enough to unseal your eyes. And if not, I would have you to know that your notes of hand have been protested at the suit of one Lécuyer, formerly head-clerk to one Solonet, a notary at Bordeaux. This sucking moneylender, having come from Gascony to try his hand at stock-jobbing, lends his name to screen your very honorable mother-in-law, the real creditor to whom you owe the hundred thousand francs, for which, it is said, she gave you seventy thousand. Compared to Madame Evangelista, Daddy Gobseck is soft flannel, velvet, a soothing draught, a meringue à la vanille, a fifth-act uncle. Your vineyard of Bellerose will be your wife’s booty; her mother is to pay her the difference between the price it sells for and the sum-total of her claims. Madame Evangelista is to acquire le Guadet and le Grassol, and the mortgages on your house at Bordeaux are all in her hands under the names of men of straw, found for her by that fellow Solonet. And in this way these two worthy women will secure an income of a hundred and twenty thousand francs, the amount derivable from your estates, added to thirty odd thousand francs a year in the funds which the dear hussies have secured.

“Your wife’s guarantee was unnecessary. The aforenamed Lécuyer came this morning to offer me repayment of the money I have sent you in exchange for a formal transfer of my claims. The vintage of 1825, which your mother-in-law has safe in the cellars at Lanstrac, is enough to pay me off. So the two women have calculated that you would be at sea by this time; but I am writing by special messenger that this may reach you in time for you to follow the advice I proceed to give you.

“I made this Lécuyer talk; and from his lies, his statements, and his concealments, I have culled the clues that I needed to reconstruct the whole web of domestic conspiracy that has been working against you. This evening at the Spanish Embassy I shall pay my admiring compliments to your wife and her mother. I shall be most attentive to Madame Evangelista, I shall throw you over in the meanest way, I shall abuse you, but with extreme subtlety; anything strong would at once put this Mascarille in petticoats on the scent. What did you do that set her against you? That is what I mean to find out. If only you had had wit enough to make love to the mother before marrying the daughter, you would at this moment be a peer of France, Duc de Manerville, and Ambassador to Madrid. If only you had sent for me at the time of your marriage! I could have taught you to know, to analyze, the two women you would have to fight, and by comparing our observations we should have hit on some good counsel. Was not I the only friend you had who would certainly honor your wife? Was I a man to be afraid of?—But after these women had learned to judge me, they took fright and divided us. If you had not been so silly as to sulk with me, they could not have eaten you out of house and home.

“Your wife contributed largely to our coolness. She was talked over by her mother, to whom she wrote twice a week, and you never heeded it. I recognized my friend Paul as I heard this detail.

“Within a month I will be on such terms with your mother-in-law that she herself will tell me the reason for the Hispano-Italian vendetta she has evidently vowed on you—you, the best fellow in the world. Did she hate you before her daughter was in love with Félix de Yandenesse? or has she driven you to the Indies that her daughter may be free, as a woman is in France when completely separated from her husband? That is the problem.

“I can see you leaping and howling when you read that your wife is madly in love with Félix de Yandenesse. If I had not taken it into my head to make a tour in the East with Montriveau, Ronquerolles, and certain other jolly fellows of your acquaintance, I could have told you more about this intrigue, which was incipient when I left. I could then see the first sprouting seed of your catastrophe. What gentleman could be scurvy enough to open such a subject without some invitation, or dare to blow on a woman? Who could bear to break the witch’s mirror in which a friend loves to contemplate the fairy scenes of a happy marriage? Are not such illusions the wealth of the heart?—And was not your wife, my dear boy, in the widest sense of the word, a woman of the world? She thought of nothing but her success, her dress; she frequented the Bouffons, the Opera, and balls; rose late, drove in the Bois, dined out or gave dinner-parties. Such a life seems to me to women what war is to men; the public sees only the victorious, and forgets the dead. Some delicate women die of this exhausting round; those who survive must have iron constitutions, and consequently very little heart and very strong stomachs. Herein lies the reason of the want of feeling, the cold atmosphere of drawing-room society. Nobler souls dwell in solitude; the tender and weak succumb. What are left are the boulders which keep the social ocean within bounds by enduring to be beaten and rolled by the breakers without wearing out. Your wife was made to withstand this life; she seemed inured to it; she was always fresh and beautiful. To me the inference was obvious—she did not love you, while you loved her to distraction. To strike the spark of love in this flinty nature a man of iron was required.

“After being caught by Lady Dudley, who could not keep him (she is the wife of my real father), Félix was obviously the man for Natalie. Nor was there any great difficulty in guessing that your wife did not care for you. From indifference to aversion is but a step; and, sooner or later, a discussion, a word, an act of authority on your part, a mere trifle, would make your wife overleap it.

“I myself could have rehearsed the scene that took place between you every night in her room. You have no child, no boy. Does not that fact account for many things to an observer? You, who were in love, could hardly discern the coldness natural to a young woman whom you have trained to the very point for Félix de Vandenesse. If you had discovered that your wife was cold-hearted, the stupid policy of married life would have prompted you to regard it as the reserve of innocence. Like all husbands, you fancied you could preserve her virtue in a world where women whisper to each other things that men dare not say, where all that a husband would never tell his wife is spoken and commented on behind a fan, with laughter and banter, apropos to a trial or an adventure. Though your wife liked the advantages of a married life, she found the price a little heavy; the price, the tax, was yourself!

“You, seeing none of these things, went on digging pits and covering them with flowers, to use the time-honored rhetorical figure. You calmly submitted to the rule which governs the common run of men, and from which I had wished to protect you.

“My dear boy, nothing was wanting to make you as great an ass as any tradesman who is surprised when his wife deceives him; nothing but this outcry to me about your sacrifices and your love for Natalie: ‘How ungrateful she would be to betray me; I have done this and that and the other, and I will do more yet, I will go to India for her sake,’ etc., etc.—dear Paul, you have lived in Paris, and you have had the honor of the most intimate friendship of one Henri de Marsay, and you do not know the commonest things, the first principles of the working of the female mechanism, the alphabet of a woman’s heart!—You may slave yourself to death, you may go to Sainte-Pélagie, you may kill two-and-twenty men, give up seven mistresses, serve Laban, cross the Desert, narrowly escape the hulks, cover yourself with disgrace; like Nelson, refuse to give battle because you must kiss Lady Hamilton’s shoulder, or, like Bonaparte, fight old Wurmser, get yourself cut up on the Bridge of Arcole, rave like Rolando, break a leg in splints to dance with a woman for five minutes!—But, my dear boy, what has any of these things to do with her loving you? If love were taken as proven by such evidence, men would be too happy; a few such demonstrations at the moment when he wanted her would win the woman of his heart.

“Love, you stupid old Paul, is a belief like that in the immaculate conception of the Virgin. You have it, or you have it not. Of what avail are rivers of blood, or the mines of Potosi, or the greatest glory, to produce an involuntary and inexplicable feeling? Young men like you, who look for love to balance their outlay, seem to me base usurers. Our legal wives owe us children and virtue; but they do not owe love. Love is the consciousness of happiness given and received, and the certainty of giving and getting it; it is an ever-living attraction, constantly satisfied, and yet insatiable. On the day when Vandenesse stirred in your wife’s heart the chord you had left untouched and virginal, your amorous flourishes, your outpouring of soul, and of money, ceased even to be remembered. Your nights of happiness strewn with roses—fudge! Your devotion—an offering of remorse. Yourself—a victim to be slain on the altar! Your previous life—a blank! One impulse of love annihilated your treasures of passion, which were now but old iron. He, Félix, has had her beauty, her devotion—for no return perhaps; but, in love, belief is as good as reality.

“Your mother-in-law was naturally on the side of the lover against the husband; secretly or confessedly she shut her eyes—or she opened them; I do not know what she did, but she took her daughter’s part against you. For fifteen years I have observed society, and I never knew a mother who, under such circumstances, deserted her daughter. Such indulgence is hereditary, from woman to woman. And what man can blame them? Some lawyer, perhaps, responsible for the Civil Code, which saw only formulas where feelings were at stake.—The extravagance into which you were dragged by the career of a fashionable wife, the tendencies of an easy nature, and your vanity too, perhaps, supplied her with the opportunity of getting rid of you by an ingenious scheme of ruin.

“From all this you will conclude, my good friend, that the charge you put upon me, and which I should have fulfilled all the more gloriously because it would have amused me, is, so to speak, null and void. The evil I was to have hindered is done—consummatum est.—Forgive me for writing à la de Marsay, as you say, on matters which to you are so serious. Far be it from me to cut capers on a friend’s grave, as heirs do on that of an uncle. But you write to me that you mean henceforth to be a man, and I take you at your word; I treat you as a politician, and not as a lover.

“Has not this mishap been to you like the brand on his shoulder that determines a convict on a systematic antagonism to society, and a revolt against it? You are hereby released from one care—marriage was your master, now it is your servant. Paul, I am your friend in the fullest meaning of the word. If your brain had been bound in a circlet of brass, if you had earlier had the energy that has come to you too late, I could have proved my friendship by telling you things that would have enabled you to walk over human beings as on a carpet. But whenever we talked over the combinations to which I owed the faculty of amusing myself with a few friends in the heart of Parisian civilization, like a bull in a china shop; whenever I told you, under romantic disguises, some true adventure of my youth, you always regarded them as romances, and did not see their bearing. Hence, I could only think of you as a case of unrequited passion. Well, on my word of honor, in the existing circumstances, you have played the nobler part, and you have lost nothing, as you might imagine, in my opinion. Though I admire a great scoundrel, I esteem and like those who are taken in.

“Apropos to the doctor who came to such a bad end, brought to the scaffold by his love for his mistress, I remember telling you the far more beautiful story of the unhappy lawyer who is still living on the hulks, I know not where, branded as a forger because he wanted to give his wife—again, an adored wife—thirty thousand francs a year, and the wife gave him up to justice in order to get rid of him and live with another gentleman. You cried shame, you and some others too who were supping with us. Well, my dear fellow, you are that lawyer—minus the hulks.

“Your friends do not spare you the discredit which, in our sphere of life, is equivalent to a sentence pronounced by the Bench. The Marquise de Listomère, the sister of the two Vandenesses, and all her following, in which little Rastignac is now enlisted—a young rascal who is coming to the front; Madame d’Aiglemont and all her set, among whom Charles de Vandenesse is regnant; the Lenoncourts, the Comtesse Féraud, Madame d’Espard, the Nucingens, the Spanish Embassy; in short, a whole section of the fashionable world, very cleverly prompted, heap mud upon your name. ‘You are a dissipated wretch, a gambler, a debauchee, and have made away with your money in the stupidest way. Your wife—an angel of virtue!—after paying your debts several times, has just paid off a hundred thousand francs to redeem bills you had drawn, though her fortune is apart from yours. Happily, you have pronounced sentence on yourself by getting out of the way. If you had gone on so, you would have reduced her to beggary, and she would have been a martyr to conjugal devotion!’ When a man rises to power, he has as many virtues as will furnish an epitaph; if he falls into poverty, he has more vices than the prodigal son; you could never imagine how many vices à la Don Juan are attributed to you now. You gambled on the Bourse, you had licentious tastes, which it cost you vast sums to indulge, and which are mentioned with comments and jests that mystify the women. You paid enormous interest to the moneylenders. The two Vandenesses laugh as they tell a story of Gigonnet’s selling you an ivory man-of-war for six thousand francs, and buying it of your manservant for five crowns only to sell it to you again, till you solemnly smashed it on discovering that you might have a real ship for the money it was costing you. The adventure occurred nine years ago, and Maxime de Trailles was the hero of it; but it is thought to fit you so well, that Maxime has lost the command of his frigate for good. In short, I cannot tell you everything, for you have furnished forth a perfect encyclopaedia of tittle-tattle, which every woman tries to add to. In this state of affairs, the most prudish are ready to legitimatize any consolation bestowed by Comte Félix de Vandenesse—for their father is dead at last, yesterday.

“Your wife is the great success of the hour. Yesterday Madame de Camps was repeating all these stories to me at the Italian Opera. ‘Don’t talk to me,’ said I, ‘you none of you know half the facts. Paul had robbed the Bank and swindled the Treasury. He murdered Ezzelino, and caused the death of three Medoras of the Rue Saint-Denis, and, between you and me, I believe him to be implicated in the doings of the Ten Thousand. His agent is the notorious Jacques Collin, whom the police have never been able to find since his last escape from the hulks; Paul harbored him in his house. As you see, he is capable of any crime; he is deceiving the government. Now they have gone off together to see what they can do in India, and rob the Great Mogul.’—Madame de Camps understood that a woman of such distinction as herself ought not to use her pretty lips as a Venetian lion’s maw.

“Many persons, on hearing these tragicomedies, refuse to believe them; they defend human nature and noble sentiments, and insist that these are fictions. My dear fellow, Talleyrand made this clever remark, ‘Everything happens.’ Certainly even stranger things than this domestic conspiracy happens under our eyes; but the world is so deeply interested in denying them, and in declaring that it is slandered, and besides, these great dramas are played so naturally, with a veneer of such perfect good taste, that I often have to wipe my eyeglass before I can see to the bottom of things. But I say once more, when a man is my friend with whom I have received the baptism of Champagne, and communion at the altar of Venus Commoda, when we have together been confirmed by the clawing fingers of the croupier, and when then my friend is in a false position, I would uproot twenty families to set him straight again.

“You must see that I have a real affection for you; have I ever to your knowledge written so long a letter as this is? So read with care all that follows.

“Alack! Paul; I must take to writing, I must get into the habit of jotting down the minutes for dispatches; I am starting on a political career. Within five years I mean to have a Minister’s portfolio, or find myself an ambassador where I can stir public affairs round in my own way. There is an age when a man’s fairest mistress is his country. I am joining the ranks of those who mean to overthrow not merely the existing Ministry, but their whole system. In fact, I am swimming in the wake of a prince who halts only on one foot, and whom I regard as a man of political genius, whose name is growing great in history; as complete a prince as a great artist may be. We are Ronquerolles, Montriveau, the Grandlieus, the Roche-Hugons, Sérizy, Féraud, and Granville, all united against the priestly party, as the silly party that is represented by the Constitutionnel ingeniously calls it. We mean to upset the two Vandenesses, the Ducs de Lenoncourt, de Navarreins, de Langeais, and de la Grande-Aumônerie. To gain our end, we may go so far as to form a coalition with la Fayette, the Orleanists, the Left—all men who must be got rid of as soon as we have won the day, for to govern on their principles is impossible; and we are capable of anything for the good of the country—and our own.

“Personal questions as to the King’s person are mere sentimental folly in these days; they must he cleared away. From that point of view, the English, with their sort of Doge, are more advanced than we are. Politics have nothing to do with that, my dear fellow. Politics consist in giving the nation an impetus by creating an oligarchy embodying a fixed theory of government, and able to direct public affairs along a straight path, instead of allowing the country to be pulled in a thousand different directions, which is what has been happening for the last forty years in our beautiful France—at once so intelligent and so sottish, so wise and so foolish; it needs a system, indeed, much more than men. What are individuals in this great question? If the end is a great one, if the country may live happy and free from trouble, what do the masses care for the profits of our stewardship, our fortune, privileges, and pleasures?

“I am now standing firm on my feet. I have at the present moment a hundred and fifty thousand francs a year in the Three per Cents, and a reserve of two hundred thousand francs to repair damages. Even this does not seem to me very much ballast in the pocket of a man starting left foot foremost to scale the heights of power.

“A fortunate accident settled the question of my setting out on this career, which did not particularly smile on me, for you know my predilection for the life of the East. After thirty-five years of slumber, my highly-respected mother woke up to the recollection that she had a son who might do her honor. Often when a vine-stock is eradicated, some years after shoots come up to the surface of the ground; well, my dear boy, my mother had almost torn me up by the roots from her heart, and I sprouted again in her head. At the age of fifty-eight, she thinks herself old enough to think no more of any men but her son. At this juncture she has met in some hot-water cauldron, at I know not what baths, a delightful old maid—English, with two hundred and forty thousand francs a year; and, like a good mother, she has inspired her with an audacious ambition to become my wife. A maid of six-and-thirty, my word! Brought up in the strictest puritanical principles, a steady sitting hen, who maintains that unfaithful wives should be publicly burnt. ‘Where will you find wood enough?’ I asked her. I could have sent her to the devil, for two hundred and forty thousand francs a year are no equivalent for liberty, nor a fair price for my physical and moral worth and my prospects. But she is the sole heiress of a gouty old fellow, some London brewer, who within a calculable time will leave her a fortune equal at least to what the sweet creature has already. Added to these advantages, she has a red nose, the eyes of a dead goat, a waist that makes one fear lest she should break into three pieces if she falls down, and the coloring of a badly painted doll. But—she is delightfully economical; but—she will adore her husband, do what he will; but—she has the English gift; she will manage my house, my stables, my servants, my estates better than any steward. She has all the dignity of virtue; she holds herself as erect as a confidante on the stage of the Français; nothing will persuade me that she has not been impaled and the shaft broken off in her body. Miss Stevens is, however, fair enough to be not too unpleasing if I must positively marry her. But—and this to me is truly pathetic—she has the hands of a woman as immaculate as the sacred ark; they are so red that I have not yet hit on any way to whiten them that will not be too costly, and I have no idea how to fine down her fingers, which are like sausages. Yes; she evidently belongs to the brew-house by her hands, and to the aristocracy by her money; but she is apt to affect the great lady a little too much, as rich English women do who want to be mistaken for them, and she displays her lobster’s claws too freely.

“She has, however, as little intelligence as I could wish in a woman. If there were a stupider one to be found, I would set out to seek her. This girl, whose name is Dinah, will never criticise me; she will never contradict me; I shall be her Upper Chamber, her Lords and Commons. In short, Paul, she is indefeasible evidence of the English genius; she is a product of English mechanics brought to their highest pitch of perfection; she was undoubtedly made at Manchester, between the manufactory of Perry’s pens and the workshops for steam-engines. It eats, it drinks, it walks, it may have children, take good care of them, and bring them up admirably, and it apes a woman so well that you would believe it real.

“When my mother introduced us, she had set up the machine so cleverly, had so carefully fitted the pegs, and oiled the wheels so thoroughly, that nothing jarred; then, when she saw I did not make a very wry face, she set the springs in motion, and the woman spoke. Finally, my mother uttered the decisive words, ‘Miss Dinah Stevens spends no more than thirty thousand francs a year, and has been traveling for seven years in order to economize.’—So there is another image, and that one is silver.

“Matters are so far advanced that the banns are to be published. We have got as far as ‘My dear love.’ Miss makes eyes at me that might floor a porter. The settlements are prepared. My fortune is not inquired into; Miss Stevens devotes a portion of hers to creating an entail in landed estate, bearing an income of two hundred and forty thousand francs, and to the purchase of a house, likewise entailed. The settlement credited to me is of a million francs. She has nothing to complain of. I leave her uncle’s money untouched.

“The worthy brewer, who has helped to found the entail, was near bursting with joy when he heard that his niece was to be a marquise. He would be capable of doing something handsome for my eldest boy.

“I shall sell out of the funds as soon as they are up to eighty, and invest in land. Thus, in two years I may look to get six hundred thousand francs a year out of real estate. So, you see, Paul, I do not give my friends advice that I am not ready to act upon.

“If you had but listened to me, you would have an English wife, some Nabob’s daughter, who would leave you the freedom of a bachelor and the independence necessary for playing the whist of ambition. I would concede my future wife to you if you were not married already. But that cannot be helped, and I am not the man to bid you chew the cud of the past.

“All this preamble was needful to explain to you that for the future my position in life will be such as a man needs if he wants to play the great game of pitch-and-toss. I cannot do without you, my friend. Instead of going to pickle in the Indies, you will find it much simpler to swim in my convoy in the waters of the Seine. Believe me, Paris is still the spot where fortune crops up most freely. Potosi is situated in the Rue Vivienne or the Rue de la Pais, the Place Vendôme, or the Rue de Rivoli. In every other country, manual labor, the sweat of the perspiring agent, marches and countermarches, are indispensable to the accumulation of a fortune; here intelligence is sufficient. Here a man, even of moderate talent, may discover a goldmine as he puts on his slippers, or picks his teeth after dinner, as he goes to bed or gets up in the morning. Find me a spot on earth where a good commonplace idea brings in more money, or is more immediately understood than it is here? If I climb to the top of the tree, am I the man to refuse you a hand, a word, a signature? Do not we young scamps need a friend we can rely on, if it were only to compromise him in our place and stead, to send him forth to die as a private, so as to save the General? Polities are impossible without a man of honor at hand, to whom everything may be said and done.

“This, then, is my advice to you. Let the Belle-Amélie sail without you; return here like a lightning flash, and I will arrange a duel for you with Félix de Vandenesse, in which you must fire first, and down with your man as dead as a pigeon. In France an outraged husband who kills his man is at once respectable and respected. No one ever makes game of him! Fear, my dear boy, is an element of social life, and a means of success for those whose eyes never fall before the gaze of any other man. I, who care no more for life than for a cup of ass’s milk, and who never felt a qualm of fear, have observed the strange effects of that form of emotion on modern manners. Some dread the idea of losing the enjoyments to which they are fettered, others that of parting from some woman. The adventurous temper of past times, when a man threw away his life like a slipper, has ceased to exist. In many men courage is merely a clever speculation on the fear that may seize their adversary. None but the Poles now, in Europe, ever fight for the pleasure of it; they still cultivate the art for art’s sake, and not as a matter of calculation. Kill Vandenesse, and your wife will tremble; your mother-in-law will tremble, the public will tremble; you will be rehabilitated, you will proclaim your frantic passion for your wife, everyone will believe you, and you will be a hero. Such is France.

“I shall not stickle over a hundred thousand francs with you. You can pay your principal debts, and can prevent utter ruin by pledging your property on a time bargain with option of repurchase, for you will soon be in a position that will allow you to pay off the mortgage before the time is up. Also, knowing your wife’s character, you can henceforth rule her with a word. While you loved her you could not hold your own; now, having ceased to love her, your power will be irresistible. I shall have made your mother-in-law as supple as a glove; for what you have to do is to reinstate yourself with the hundred and fifty thousand francs those women have saved for themselves.

“So give up your self-exile, which always seems to me the charcoal-brazier of men of brains. If you run away, you leave slander mistress of the field. The gambler who goes home to fetch his money and comes back to the tables loses all. You must have your funds in your pocket. You appear to me to be seeking fresh reinforcements in the Indies. No good at all!—We are two gamblers at the green table of politics; between you and me loans are a matter of course. So take post-horses, come to Paris, and begin a new game; with Henri de Marsay for a partner you will win, for Henri de Marsay knows what he wants and when to strike.

“This, you see, is where we stand. My real father is in the English Ministry. We shall have connections with Spain through the Evangelistas; for as soon as your mother-in-law and I have measured claws, we shall perceive that when devil meets devil there is nothing to be gained on either side. Montriveau is a Lieutenant-General; he will certainly be War Minister sooner or later, for his eloquence gives him much power in the Chamber. Ronquerolles is in the Ministry and on the Privy Council. Martial de la Roche-Hugon is appointed Minister to Germany, and made a peer of France, and he has brought us as an addition Marshal the Duc de Carigliano and all round ‘rump’ of the Empire, which so stupidly held on to the rear of the Restoration. Sérizy is leader of the State Council; he is indispensable there. Granville is master of the legal party, he has two sons on the Bench. The Grandlieus are in high favor at Court. Féraud is the soul of the Gondreville set, low intriguers who, I know not why, are always at the top.—Thus supported, what have we to fear? We have a foot in every capital, an eye in every cabinet; we hem in the whole administration without their suspecting it.

“Is not the money question a mere trifle, nothing at all, when all this machinery is ready? And, above all, what is a woman? Will you never be anything but a schoolboy? What is life, my dear fellow, when it is wrapped up in a woman? A ship over which we have no command, which obeys a wild compass though it has indeed a lodestone; which runs before every wind that blows, and in which the man really is a galley-slave, obedient not only to the law, but to every rule improvised by his driver, without the possibility of retaliation. Phaugh!

“I can understand that from passion, or the pleasure to be found in placing our power in a pair of white hands, a man should obey his wife—but when it comes to obeying Médor—then away with Angelica!—The great secret of social alchemy, my dear sir, is to get the best of everything out of each stage of our life, to gather all its leaves in spring, all its flowers in summer, all its fruits in autumn. Now we—I and some boon companions—have enjoyed ourselves for twelve years, like musketeers, black, white, and red, refusing ourselves nothing, not even a filibustering expedition now and again; henceforth we mean to shake down ripe plums, at an age when experience has ripened the harvest. Come, join us; you shall have a share of the pudding we mean to stir.

“Come, and you will find a friend wholly yours in the skin of
“Henri de M.”

At the moment when Paul de Manerville finished reading this letter, of which every sentence fell like a sledgehammer on the tower of his hopes, his illusions, and his love, he was already beyond the Azores. In the midst of this ruin, rage surged up in him, cold and impotent rage.

“What had I done to them?” he asked himself.

This question is the impulse of the simpleton, of the weak natures, which, as they can see nothing, can foresee nothing.

“Henri, Henri!” he cried aloud. “The one true friend!”

Many men would have gone mad. Paul went to bed and slept the deep sleep which supervenes on immeasurable disaster; as Napoleon slept after the battle of Waterloo.

Colophon

A Marriage Settlement
was published in 1835 by
Honoré de Balzac.
It was translated from French in 1901 by
Clara Bell.

This ebook was transcribed and produced for
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The cover page is adapted from
Gossip,
a painting completed in 1873 by
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