The Marriage Contract......................................................................................................................................1

Monsieur de Manerville, the father, was a worthy Norman gentleman, well known to the Marechael de

Richelieu, who married him to one of the richest heiresses of Bordeaux in the days when the old duke reigned

in Guienne as governor. The Norman then sold the estate he owned in Bessin, and became a Gascon, allured

by the beauty of the chateau de Lanstrac, a delightful residence owned by his wife. During the last days of the

reign of Louis XV., he bought the post of major of the Gate Guards, and lived till 1813, having by great good

Toward the close of the year, 1790, he went to Martinque, where his wife had interests, leaving the

management of his property in Gascogne to an honest man, a notary's clerk, named Mathias, who was

inclined to or at any rate didgive into the new ideas. On his return the Comte de Manerville found his

possessions intact and wellmanaged. This sound result was the fruit produced by grafting the Gascon on the

Madame de Manerville died in 1810. Having learned the importance of worldly goods through the

dissipations of his youth, and, giving them, like many another old man, a higher place than they really hold in

life, Monsieur de Manerville became increasingly economical, miserly, and sordid. Without reflecting that

the avarice of parents prepares the way for the prodigalities of children, he allowed almost nothing to his son,

Paul de Manerville, coming home from the college of Vendome in 1810, lived under close paternal discipline

for three years. The tyranny by which the old man of seventy oppressed his heir influenced, necessarily, a

heart and a character which were not yet formed. Paul, the son, without lacking the physical courage which is

vital in the air of Gascony, dared not struggle against his father, and consequently lost that faculty of

resistance which begets moral courage. His thwarted feelings were driven to the depths of his heart, where

they remained without expression; later, when he felt them to be out of harmony with the maxims of the

world, he could only think rightly and act mistakenly. He was capable of fighting for a mere word or look, yet

he trembled at the thought of dismissing a servant,his timidity showing itself in those contests only which

required a persistent will. Capable of doing great things to fly from persecution, he would never have

prevented it by systematic opposition, nor have faced it with the steady employment of force of will. Timid in

thought, bold in actions, he long preserved that inward simplicity which makes a man the dupe and the

voluntary victim of things against which certain souls hesitate to revolt, preferring to endure them rather than

complain. He was, in point of fact, imprisoned by his father's old mansion, for he had not enough money to

The old gentleman took him every evening, in an old carriage drawn by illharnessed old horses, attended by

illdressed old servants, to royalist houses, where he met a society composed of the relics of the

parliamentary nobility and the martial nobility. These two nobilities coalescing after the Revolution, had now

transformed themselves into a landed aristocracy. Crushed by the vast and swelling fortunes of the maritime

cities, this Faubourg SaintGermain of Bordeaux responded by lofty disdain to the sumptuous displays of

commerce, government administrations, and the military. Too young to understand social distinctions and the

necessities underlying the apparent assumption which they create, Paul was bored to death among these

ancients, unaware that the connections of his youth would eventually secure to him that aristocratic

He found some slight compensations for the dulness of these evenings in certain manual exercises which

always delight young men, and which his father enjoined upon him. The old gentleman considered that to

know the art of fencing and the use of arms, to ride well on horseback, to play tennis, to acquire good

manners,in short, to possess all the frivolous accomplishments of the old nobility,made a young man of

the present day a finished gentleman. Accordingly, Paul took a fencinglesson every morning, went to the

ridingschool, and practised in a pistolgallery. The rest of his time was spent in reading novels, for his

father would never have allowed the more abstruse studies now considered necessary to finish an education.

So monotonous a life would soon have killed the poor youth if the death of the old man had not delivered him

from this tyranny at the moment when it was becoming intolerable. Paul found himself in possession of

considerable capital, accumulated by his father's avarice, together with landed estates in the best possible

condition. But he now held Bordeaux in horror; neither did he like Lanstrac, where his father had taken him

to spend the summers, employing his whole time from morning till night in hunting.

As soon as the estate was fairly settled, the young heir, eager for enjoyment, bought consols with his capital,

left the management of the landed property to old Mathias, his father's notary, and spent the next six years

away from Bordeaux. At first he was attached to the French embassy at Naples; after that he was secretary of

After seeing the world and life, after losing several illusions, after dissipating all the loose capital which his

father had amassed, there came a time when, in order to continue his way of life, Paul was forced to draw

upon the territorial revenues which his notary was laying by. At this critical moment, seized by one of the

socalled virtuous impulses, he determined to leave Paris, return to Bordeaux, regulate his affairs, lead the

life of a country gentleman at Lanstrac, improve his property, marry, and become, in the end, a deputy.

Paul was a count; nobility was once more of matrimonial value; he could, and he ought to make a good

marriage. While many women desire a title, many others like to marry a man to whom a knowledge of life is

familiar. Now Paul had acquired, in exchange for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs squandered in

six years, that possession, which cannot be bought and is practically of more value than gold and silver; a

knowledge which exacts long study, probation, examinations, friends, enemies, acquaintances, certain

manners, elegance of form and demeanor, a graceful and euphonious name,a knowledge, moreover, which

means many loveaffairs, duels, bets lost on a racecourse, disillusions, deceptions, annoyances, toils, and a

vast variety of undigested pleasures. In short, he had become what is called elegant. But in spite of his mad

extravagance he had never made himself a mere fashionable man. In the burlesque army of men of the world,

the man of fashion holds the place of a marshal of France, the man of elegance is the equivalent of a

lieutenantgeneral. Paul enjoyed his lesser reputation, of elegance, and knew well how to sustain it. His

servants were welldressed, his equipages were cited, his suppers had a certain vogue; in short, his bachelor

establishment was counted among the seven or eight whose splendor equalled that of the finest houses in

Buthe had not caused the wretchedness of any woman; he gambled without losing; his luck was not

notorious; he was far too upright to deceive or mislead any one, no matter who, even a wanton; never did he

leave his billetsdoux lying about, and he possessed no coffer or desk for loveletters which his friends were

at liberty to read while he tied his cravat or trimmed his beard. Moreover, not willing to dip into his Guienne

property, he had not that bold extravagance which leads to great strokes and calls attention at any cost to the

proceedings of a young man. Neither did he borrow money, but he had the folly to lend to friends, who then

deserted him and spoke of him no more either for good or evil. He seemed to have regulated his dissipations

methodically. The secret of his character lay in his father's tyranny, which had made him, as it were, a social

So, one morning, he said to a friend named de Marsay, who afterwards became celebrated:

"You must be twentyseven years of age before you can find it out," replied de Marsay, laughing.

"Well, I am twentyseven; and precisely because I am twentyseven I mean to live the life of a country

gentleman at Lanstrac. I'll transport my belongings to Bordeaux into my father's old mansion, and I'll spend

"I'm your friend, as you know, my old Paul," said de Marsay, after a moment's silence, "and I say to you:

settle down into a worthy father and husband and you'll be ridiculous for the rest of your days. If you could

be happy and ridiculous, the thing might be thought of; but you will not be happy. You haven't a strong

enough wrist to drive a household. I'll do you justice and say you are a perfect horseman; no one knows as

well as you how to pick up or thrown down the reins, and make a horse prance, and sit firm to the saddle.

But, my dear fellow, marriage is another thing. I see you now, led along at a slapping pace by Madame la

Comtesse de Manerville, going whither you would not, oftener at a gallop than a trot, and presently

unhorsed!yes, unhorsed into a ditch and your legs broken. Listen to me. You still have some fortyodd

thousand francs a year from your property in the Gironde. Good. Take your horses and servants and furnish

your house in Bordeaux; you can be king of Bordeaux, you can promulgate there the edicts that we put forth

in Paris; you can be the correspondent of our stupidities. Very good. Play the rake in the provinces; better

still, commit follies; follies may win you celebrity. Butdon't marry. Who marries nowadays? Only

merchants, for the sake of their capital, or to be two to drag the cart; only peasants who want to produce

children to work for them; only brokers and notaries who want a wife's 'dot' to pay for their practice; only

miserable kings who are forced to continue their miserable dynasties. But we are exempt from the pack, and

you want to shoulder it! And why DO you want to marry? You ought to give your best friend your reasons. In

the first place, if you marry an heiress as rich as yourself, eighty thousand francs a year for two is not the

same thing as forty thousand francs a year for one, because the two are soon three or four when the children

come. You haven't surely any love for that silly race of Manerville which would only hamper you? Are you

ignorant of what a father and mother have to be? Marriage, my old Paul, is the silliest of all the social

immolations; our children alone profit by it, and don't know its price until their horses are nibbling the

flowers on our grave. Do you regret your father, that old tyrant who made your first years wretched? How can

you be sure that your children will love you? The very care you take of their education, your precautions for

their happiness, your necessary sternness will lessen their affection. Children love a weak or a prodigal father,

whom they will despise in after years. You'll live betwixt fear and contempt. No man is a good head of a

family merely because he wants to be. Look round on all our friends and name to me one whom you would

like to have for a son. We have known a good many who dishonor their names. Children, my dear Paul, are

the most difficult kind of merchandise to take care of. Yours, you think, will be angels; well, so be it! Have

you ever sounded the gulf which lies between the lives of a bachelor and a married man? Listen. As a

bachelor you can say to yourself: 'I shall never exhibit more than a certain amount of the ridiculous; the

public will think of me what I choose it to think.' Married, you'll drop into the infinitude of the ridiculous!

Bachelor, you can make your own happiness; you enjoy some today, you do without it tomorrow; married,

you must take it as it comes; and the day you want it you will have to go without it. Marry, and you'll grow a

blockhead; you'll calculate dowries; you'll talk morality, public and religious; you'll think young men

immoral and dangerous; in short, you'll become a social academician. It's pitiable! The old bachelor whose

property the heirs are waiting for, who fights to his last breath with his nurse for a spoonful of drink, is blest

in comparison with a married man. I'm not speaking of all that will happen to annoy, bore, irritate, coerce,

oppose, tyrannize, narcotize, paralyze, and idiotize a man in marriage, in that struggle of two beings always

in one another's presence, bound forever, who have coupled each other under the strange impression that they

were suited. No, to tell you those things would be merely a repetition of Boileau, and we know him by heart.

Still, I'll forgive your absurd idea if you will promise me to marry "en grand seigneur"; to entail your

property; to have two legitimate children, to give your wife a house and household absolutely distinct from

yours; to meet her only in society, and never to return from a journey without sending her a courier to

announce it. Two hundred thousand francs a year will suffice for such a life and your antecedents will enable

you to marry some rich English woman hungry for a title. That's an aristocratic life which seems to me

thoroughly French; the only life in which we can retain the respect and friendship of a woman; the only life

which distinguishes a man from the present crowd,in short, the only life for which a young man should

even think of resigning his bachelor blessings. Thus established, the Comte de Manerville may advise his

epoch, place himself above the world, and be nothing less than a minister or an ambassador. Ridicule can

never touch him; he has gained the social advantages of marriage while keeping all the privileges of a

"But, my good friend, I am not de Marsay; I am plainly, as you yourself do me the honor to say, Paul de

Manerville, worthy father and husband, deputy of the Centre, possibly peer of France,a destiny extremely

"Ah! my poor friend, is that where you are? Adieu, Paul. Henceforth, I refuse to respect you. One word more,

however, for I cannot agree coldly to your abdication. Look and see in what the strength of our position lies.

A bachelor with only six thousand francs a year remaining to him has at least his reputation for elegance and

the memory of success. Well, even that fantastic shadow has enormous value in it. Life still offers many

chances to the unmarried man. Yes, he can aim at anything. But marriage, Paul, is the social 'Thus far shalt

thou go and no farther.' Once married you can never be anything but what you then areunless your wife

"But," said Paul, "you are crushing me down with exceptional theories. I am tired of living for others; of

having horses merely to exhibit them; of doing all things for the sake of what may be said of them; of wasting

my substance to keep fools from crying out: 'Dear, dear! Paul is still driving the same carriage. What has he

done with his fortune? Does he squander it? Does he gamble at the Bourse? No, he's a millionaire. Madame

such a one is mad about him. He sent to England for a harness which is certainly the handsomest in all Paris.

The fourhorse equipages of Messieurs de Marsay and de Manerville were much noticed at Longchamps; the

harness was perfect'in short, the thousand silly things with which a crowd of idiots lead us by the nose.

Believe me, my dear Henri, I admire your power, but I don't envy it. You know how to judge of life; you

think and act as a statesman; you are able to place yourself above all ordinary laws, received ideas, adopted

conventions, and acknowledged prejudices; in short, you can grasp the profits of a situation in which I should

find nothing but illluck. Your cool, systematic, possibly true deductions are, to the eyes of the masses,

shockingly immoral. I belong to the masses. I must play my game of life according to the rules of the society

in which I am forced to live. While putting yourself above all human things on peaks of ice, you still have

feelings; but as for me, I should freeze to death. The life of that great majority, to which I belong in my

commonplace way, is made up of emotions of which I now have need. Often a man coquets with a dozen

women and obtains none. Then, whatever be his strength, his cleverness, his knowledge of the world, he

undergoes convulsions, in which he is crushed as between two gates. For my part, I like the peaceful chances

and changes of life; I want that wholesome existence in which we find a woman always at our side."

Paul was not to be put out of countenance, and continued: "Laugh if you like; I shall feel myself a happy man

when my valet enters my room in the morning and says: 'Madame is awaiting monsieur for breakfast';

"a heart in which to confide my interests and my secrets. I wish to live in such close union with a woman

that our affection shall not depend upon a yes or a no, or be open to the disillusions of love. In short, I have

the necessary courage to become, as you say, a worthy husband and father. I feel myself fitted for family

joys; I wish to put myself under the conditions prescribed by society; I desire to have a wife and children."

"You remind me of a hive of honeybees! But go your way, you'll be a dupe all your life. Ha, ha! you wish to

marry to have a wife! In other words, you wish to solve satisfactorily to your own profit the most difficult

problem invented by those bourgeois morals which were created by the French Revolution; and, what is

more, you mean to begin your attempt by a life of retirement. Do you think your wife won't crave the life you

say you despise? Will SHE be disgusted with it, as you are? If you won't accept the noble conjugality just

formulated for your benefit by your friend de Marsay, listen, at any rate, to his final advice. Remain a

bachelor for the next thirteen years; amuse yourself like a lost soul; then, at forty, on your first attack of gout,

marry a widow of thirtysix. Then you may possibly be happy. If you now take a young girl to wife, you'll

"My dear fellow," replied de Marsay, "Boileau's satire against women is a tissue of poetical commonplaces.

Why shouldn't women have defects? Why condemn them for having the most obvious thing in human nature?

To my mind, the problem of marriage is not at all at the point where Boileau puts it. Do you suppose that

marriage is the same thing as love, and that being a man suffices to make a wife love you? Have you gathered

nothing in your boudoir experience but pleasant memories? I tell you that everything in our bachelor life

leads to fatal errors in the married man unless he is a profound observer of the human heart. In the happy

days of his youth a man, by the caprice of our customs, is always lucky; he triumphs over women who are all

ready to be triumphed over and who obey their own desires. One thing after anotherthe obstacles created

by the laws, the sentiments and natural defences of womenall engender a mutuality of sensations which

deceives superficial persons as to their future relations in marriage, where obstacles no longer exist, where

the wife submits to love instead of permitting it, and frequently repulses pleasure instead of desiring it. Then,

the whole aspect of a man's life changes. The bachelor, who is free and without a care, need never fear

repulsion; in marriage, repulsion is almost certain and irreparable. It may be possible for a lover to make a

woman reverse an unfavorable decision, but such a change, my dear Paul, is the Waterloo of husbands. Like

Napoleon, the husband is thenceforth condemned to victories which, in spite of their number, do not prevent

the first defeat from crushing him. The woman, so flattered by the perseverance, so delighted with the ardor

of a lover, calls the same things brutality in a husband. You, who talk of marrying, and who will marry, have

you ever meditated on the Civil Code? I myself have never muddied my feet in that hovel of commentators,

that garret of gossip, called the Lawschool. I have never so much as opened the Code; but I see its

application on the vitals of society. The Code, my dear Paul, makes woman a ward; it considers her a child, a

minor. Now how must we govern children? By fear. In that one word, Paul, is the curb of the beast. Now, feel

your own pulse! Have you the strength to play the tyrant,you, so gentle, so kind a friend, so confiding;

you, at whom I have laughed, but whom I love, and love enough to reveal to you my science? For this is

science. Yes, it proceeds from a science which the Germans are already calling Anthropology. Ah! if I had

not already solved the mystery of life by pleasure, if I had not a profound antipathy for those who think

instead of act, if I did not despise the ninnies who are silly enough to believe in the truth of a book, when the

sands of the African deserts are made of the ashes of I know not how many unknown and pulverized

Londons, Romes, Venices, and Parises, I would write a book on modern marriages made under the influence

of the Christian system, and I'd stick a lantern on that heap of sharp stones among which lie the votaries of

the social 'multiplicamini.' But the question is, Does humanity require even an hour of my time? And besides,

isn't the more reasonable use of ink that of snaring hearts by writing loveletters?Well, shall you bring the

"Don't be uneasy; we will treat you politely, as MaisonRouge treated the English at Fontenoy."

Though the foregoing conversation affected the Comte de Manerville somewhat, he made it a point of duty to

carry out his intentions, and he returned to Bordeaux during the winter of the year 1821.

The expenses he incurred in restoring and furnishing his family mansion sustained the reputation for elegance

which had preceded him. Introduced through his former connections to the royalist society of Bordeaux, to

which he belonged as much by his personal opinions as by his name and fortune, he soon obtained a

fashionable preeminence. His knowledge of life, his manners, his Parisian acquirements enchanted the

Faubourg SaintGermain of Bordeaux. An old marquise made use of a term formerly in vogue at court to

express the flowery beauty of the fops and beaux of the olden time, whose language and demeanor were

social laws: she called him "the pink of fashion." The liberal clique caught up the word and used it satirically

Paul de Manerville acquitted himself gloriously of the obligations imposed by his flowery title. It happened

to him, as to many a mediocre actor, that the day when the public granted him their full attention he became,

one may almost say, superior. Feeling at his ease, he displayed the fine qualities which accompanied his

defects. His wit had nothing sharp or bitter in it; his manners were not supercilious; his intercourse with

women expressed the respect they like,it was neither too deferential, nor too familiar; his foppery went no

farther than a care for his personal appearance which made him agreeable; he showed consideration for rank;

he allowed young men a certain freedom, to which his Parisian experience assigned due limits; though skilful

with sword and pistol, he was noted for a feminine gentleness for which others were grateful. His medium

height and plumpness (which had not yet increased into obesity, an obstacle to personal elegance) did not

prevent his outer man from playing the part of a Bordelais Brummell. A white skin tinged with the hues of

health, handsome hands and feet, blue eyes with long lashes, black hair, graceful motions, a chest voice

which kept to its middle tones and vibrated in the listener's heart, harmonized well with his sobriquet. Paul

was indeed that delicate flower which needs such careful culture, the qualities of which display themselves

only in a moist and suitable soil,a flower which rough treatment dwarfs, which the hot sun burns, and a

frost lays low. He was one of those men made to receive happiness, rather than to give it; who have

something of the woman in their nature, wishing to be divined, understood, encouraged; in short, a man to

If such a character creates difficulties in private life, it is gracious and full of attraction for the world.

Consequently, Paul had great success in the narrow social circle of the provinces, where his mind, always, so

The arrangement of his house and the restoration of the chateau de Lanstrac, where he introduced the comfort

and luxury of an English countryhouse, absorbed the capital saved by the notary during the preceding six

years. Reduced now to his strict income of fortyodd thousand a year, he thought himself wise and prudent in

After publicly exhibiting his equipages, entertaining the most distinguished young men of the place, and

giving various hunting parties on the estate at Lanstrac, Paul saw very plainly that provincial life would never

do without marriage. Too young to employ his time in miserly occupations, or in trying to interest himself in

the speculative improvements in which provincials sooner or later engage (compelled thereto by the necessity

of establishing their children), he soon felt the need of that variety of distractions a habit of which becomes at

last the very life of a Parisian. A name to preserve, property to transmit to heirs, social relations to be created

by a household where the principal families of the neighborhood could assemble, and a weariness of all

irregular connections, were not, however, the determining reasons of his matrimonial desires. From the time

he first returned to the provinces he had been secretly in love with the queen of Bordeaux, the great beauty,

About the beginning of the century, a rich Spaniard, named Evangelista, established himself in Bordeaux,

where his letters of recommendation, as well as his large fortune, gave him an entrance to the salons of the

nobility. His wife contributed greatly to maintain him in the good graces of an aristocracy which may perhaps

have adopted him in the first instance merely to pique the society of the class below them. Madame

Evangelista, who belonged to the CasaReale, an illustrious family of Spain, was a Creole, and, like all

women served by slaves, she lived as a great lady, knew nothing of the value of money, repressed no whims,

even the most expensive, finding them ever satisfied by an adoring husband who generously concealed from

her knowledge the runninggear of the financial machine. Happy in finding her pleased with Bordeaux,

where his interests obliged him to live, the Spaniard bought a house, set up a household, received in much

style, and gave many proofs of possessing a fine taste in all things. Thus, from 1800 to 1812, Monsieur and

The Spaniard died in 1813, leaving his wife a widow at thirtytwo years of age, with an immense fortune and

the prettiest little girl in the world, a child of eleven, who promised to be, and did actually become, a most

accomplished young woman. Clever as Madame Evangelista was, the Restoration altered her position; the

royalist party cleared its ranks and several of the old families left Bordeaux. Though the head and hand of her

husband were lacking in the direction of her affairs, for which she had hitherto shown the indifference of a

Creole and the inaptitude of a lackadaisical woman, she was determined to make no change in her manner of

living. At the period when Paul resolved to return to his native town, Mademoiselle Natalie Evangelista was a

remarkably beautiful young girl, and, apparently, the richest match in Bordeaux, where the steady diminution

of her mother's capital was unknown. In order to prolong her reign, Madame Evangelista had squandered

enormous sums. Brilliant fetes and the continuation of an almost regal style of living kept the public in its

Natalie was now in her nineteenth year, but no proposal of marriage had as yet reached her mother's ear.

Accustomed to gratify her fancies, Mademoiselle Evangelista wore cashmeres and jewels, and lived in a style

of luxury which alarmed all speculative suitors in a region and at a period when sons were as calculating as

their parents. The fatal remark, "None but a prince can afford to marry Mademoiselle Evangelista," circulated

among the salons and the cliques. Mothers of families, dowagers who had granddaughters to establish, young

girls jealous of Natalie, whose elegance and tyrannical beauty annoyed them, took pains to envenom this

opinion with treacherous remarks. When they heard a possible suitor say with ecstatic admiration, as Natalie

entered a ballroom, "Heavens, how beautiful she is!" "Yes," the mammas would answer, "but expensive." If

some newcomer thought Mademoiselle Evangelista bewitching and said to a marriageable man that he

couldn't do it better, "Who would be bold enough," some woman would reply, "to marry a girl whose mother

gives her a thousand francs a month for her toilet,a girl who has horses and a maid of her own, and wears

laces? Yes, her 'peignoirs' are trimmed with mechlin. The price of her washing would support the household

of a clerk. She wears pelerines in the morning which actually cost six francs to get up."

These, and other speeches said occasionally in the form of praise extinguished the desires that some men

might have had to marry the beautiful Spanish girl. Queen of every ball, accustomed to flattery, "blasee" with

the smiles and the admiration which followed her every step, Natalie, nevertheless, knew nothing of life. She

lived as the bird which flies, as the flower that blooms, finding every one about her eager to do her will. She

was ignorant of the price of things; she knew neither the value of money, nor whence it came, how it should

be managed, and how spent. Possibly she thought that every household had cooks and coachmen,

lady'smaids and footmen, as the fields have hay and the trees their fruits. To her, beggars and paupers, fallen

trees and waste lands seemed in the same category. Pampered and petted as her mother's hope, no fatigue was

allowed to spoil her pleasure. Thus she bounded through life as a courser on his steppe, unbridled and

Six month's after Paul's arrival the Pink of Fashion and the Queen of Balls met in presence of the highest

society of the town of Bordeaux. The two flowers looked at each other with apparent coldness, and mutually

thought each other charming. Interested in watching the effects of the meeting, Madame Evangelista divined

in the expression of Paul's eyes the feelings within him, and she muttered to herself, "He will be my

soninlaw." Paul, on the other hand, said to himself, as he looked at Natalie, "She will be my wife."

The wealth of the Evangelistas, proverbial in Bordeaux, had remained in Paul's mind as a memory of his

childhood. Thus the pecuniary conditions were known to him from the start, without necessitating those

discussions and inquiries which are as repugnant to a timid mind as to a proud one. When some persons

attempting to say to Paul a few flattering phrases as to Natalie's manner, language, and beauty, ending by

remarks, cruelly calculated to deter him, on the lavish extravagance of the Evangelistas, the Pink of Fashion

replied with a disdain that was welldeserved by such provincial pettiness. This method of receiving such

speeches soon silenced them; for he now set the tone to the ideas and language as well as to the manners of

those about him. He had imported from his travels a certain development of the Britannic personality with its

icy barriers, also a tone of Byronic pessimism as to life, together with English plate, boot polish, ponies,

It thus happened that Paul escaped the discouragements hitherto presented to marriageable men by dowagers

and young girls. Madame Evangelista began by asking him to formal dinners on various occasions. The Pink

of Fashion would not, of course, miss festivities to which none but the most distinguished young men of the

town were bidden. In spite of the coldness that Paul assumed, which deceived neither mother nor daughter, he

was drawn, step by step, into the path of marriage. Sometimes as he passed in his tilbury, or rode by on his

fine English horse, he heard the young men of his acquaintance say to one another:

"There's a lucky man. He is rich and handsome, and is to marry, so they say, Mademoiselle Evangelista.

When he met the Evangelistas he felt proud of the particular distinction which mother and daughter imparted

to their bows. If Paul had not secretly, within his heart, fallen in love with Mademoiselle Natalie, society

would certainly have married him to her in spite of himself. Society, which never causes good, is the

accomplice of much evil; then when it beholds the evil it has hatched maternally, it rejects and revenges it.

Society in Bordeaux, attributing a "dot" of a million to Mademoiselle Evangelista, bestowed it upon Paul

without awaiting the consent of either party. Their fortunes, so it was said, agreed as well as their persons.

Paul had the same habits of luxury and elegance in the midst of which Natalie had been brought up. He had

just arranged for himself a house such as no other man in Bordeaux could have offered her. Accustomed to

Parisian expenses and the caprices of Parisian women, he alone was fitted to meet the pecuniary difficulties

which were likely to follow this marriage with a girl who was as much of a Creole and a great lady as her

mother. Where they themselves, remarked the marriageable men, would have been ruined, the Comte de

Manerville, rich as he was, could evade disaster. In short, the marriage was made. Persons in the highest

"Every one gives you Mademoiselle Evangelista. If you marry her you will do well. You could not find, even

in Paris, a more delightful girl. She is beautiful, graceful, elegant, and takes after the Casa Reales through

her mother. You will make a charming couple; you have the same tastes, the same desires in life, and you will

certainly have the most agreeable house in Bordeaux. Your wife need only bring her nightcap; all is ready

for her. You are fortunate indeed in such a motherinlaw. A woman of intelligence, and very adroit, she will

be a great help to you in public life, to which you ought to aspire. Besides, she has sacrificed everything to

her daughter, whom she adores, and Natalie will, no doubt, prove a good wife, for she loves her mother. You

"That is all very well," replied Paul, who, in spite of his love, was desirous of keeping his freedom of action,

He now went frequently to Madame Evangelista's, partly to occupy his vacant hours, which were harder for

him to employ than for most men. There alone he breathed the atmosphere of grandeur and luxury to which

At forty years of age, Madame Evangelista was beautiful, with the beauty of those glorious summer sunsets

which crown a cloudless day. Her spotless reputation had given an endless topic of conversation to the

Bordeaux cliques; the curiosity of the women was all the more lively because the widow gave signs of the

temperament which makes a Spanish woman and a Creole particularly noted. She had black eyes and hair, the

feet and form of a Spanish woman,that swaying form the movements of which have a name in Spain. Her

face, still beautiful, was particularly seductive for its Creole complexion, the vividness of which can be

described only by comparing it to muslin overlying crimson, so equally is the whiteness suffused with color.

Her figure, which was full and rounded, attracted the eye by a grace which united nonchalance with vivacity,

strength with ease. She attracted and she imposed, she seduced, but promised nothing. She was tall, which

gave her at times the air and carriage of a queen. Men were taken by her conversation like birds in a snare; for

she had by nature that genius which necessity bestows on schemes; she advanced from concession to

concession, strengthening herself with what she gained to ask for more, knowing well how to retreat with

rapid steps when concessions were demanded in return. Though ignorant of facts, she had known the courts

of Spain and Naples, the celebrated men of the two Americas, many illustrious families of England and the

continent, all of which gave her so extensive an education superficially that it seemed immense. She received

her society with the grace and dignity which are never learned, but which come to certain naturally fine

spirits like a second nature; assimilating choice things wherever they are met. If her reputation for virtue was

unexplained, it gave at any rate much authority to her actions, her conversation, and her character.

Mother and daughter had a true friendship for each other, beyond the filial and maternal sentiment. They

suited one another, and their perpetual contact had never produced the slightest jar. Consequently many

persons explained Madame Evangelista's actions by maternal love. But although Natalie consoled her

mother's persistent widowhood, she may not have been the only motive for it. Madame Evangelista had been,

it was said, in love with a man who recovered his titles and property under the Restoration. This man,

desirous of marrying her in 1814 had discreetly severed the connection in 1816. Madame Evangelista, to all

appearance the besthearted woman in the world, had, in the depths of her nature, a fearful quality,

explainable only by Catherine de Medici's device: "Odiate e aspettate""Hate and wait." Accustomed to

rule, having always been obeyed, she was like other royalties, amiable, gentle, easy and pleasant in ordinary

life, but terrible, implacable, if the pride of the woman, the Spaniard, and the Casa Reale was touched. She

never forgave. This woman believed in the power of her hatred; she made an evil fate of it and bade it hover

above her enemy. This fatal power she employed against the man who had jilted her. Events which seemed to

prove the influence of her "jettatura" the casting of an evil eyeconfirmed her superstitious faith in

herself. Though a minister and peer of France, this man began to ruin himself, and soon came to total ruin.

His property, his personal and public honor were doomed to perish. At this crisis Madame Evangelista in her

brilliant equipage passed her faithless lover walking on foot in the Champes Elysees, and crushed him with a

look which flamed with triumph. This misadventure, which occupied her mind for two years, was the original

cause of her not remarrying. Later, her pride had drawn comparisons between the suitors who presented

She had thus reached, through mistaken calculations and disappointed hopes, that period of life when women

have no other part to take in life than that of mother; a part which involves the sacrifice of themselves to their

children, the placing of their interests outside of self upon another household,the last refuge of human

Madame Evangelista divined Paul's nature intuitively, and hid her own from his perception. Paul was the very

man she desired for a sonin law, for the responsible editor of her future power. He belonged, through his

mother, to the family of Maulincour, and the old Baronne de Maulincour, the friend of the Vidame de

Pamiers, was then living in the centre of the faubourg SaintGermain. The grandson of the baroness, Auguste

de Maulincour, held a fine position in the army. Paul would therefore be an excellent introducer for the

Evangelistas into Parisian society. The widow had known something of the Paris of the Empire, she now

desired to shine in the Paris of the Restoration. There alone were the elements of political fortune, the only

business in which women of the world could decently cooperate. Madame Evangelista, compelled by her

husband's affairs to reside in Bordeaux, disliked the place. She desired a wider field, as gamblers rush to

higher stakes. For her own personal ends, therefore, she looked to Paul as a means of destiny, she proposed to

employ the resources of her own talent and knowledge of life to advance her soninlaw, in order to enjoy

through him the delights of power. Many men are thus made the screens of secret feminine ambitions.

Madame Evangelista had, however, more than one interest, as we shall see, in laying hold of her daughter's

Paul was naturally captivated by this woman, who charmed him all the more because she seemed to seek no

influence over him. In reality she was using her ascendancy to magnify herself, her daughter, and all her

surroundings in his eyes, for the purpose of ruling from the start the man in whom she saw a means of

gratifying her social longings. Paul, on the other hand, began to value himself more highly when he felt

himself appreciated by the mother and daughter. He thought himself much cleverer than he really was when

he found his reflections and sayings accepted and understood by Mademoiselle Nataliewho raised her head

and smiled in response to themand by the mother, whose flattery always seemed involuntary. The two

women were so kind and friendly to him, he was so sure of pleasing them, they ruled him so delightfully by

holding the thread of his selflove, that he soon passed all his time at the hotel Evangelista.

A year after his return to Bordeaux, Comte Paul, without having declared himself, was so attentive to Natalie

that the world considered him as courting her. Neither mother nor daughter appeared to be thinking of

marriage. Mademoiselle Evangelista preserved towards Paul the reserve of a great lady who can make herself

charming and converse agreeably without permitting a single step into intimacy. This reserve, so little

customary among provincials, pleased Paul immensely. Timid men are shy; sudden proposals alarm them.

They retreat from happiness when it comes with a rush, and accept misfortune if it presents itself mildly with

gentle shadows. Paul therefore committed himself in his own mind all the more because he saw no effort on

Madame Evangelista's part to bind him. She fairly seduced him one evening by remarking that to superior

women as well as men there came a period of life when ambition superseded all the earlier emotions of life.

"That woman is fitted," thought Paul, as he left her, "to advance me in diplomacy before I am even made a

If, in all the circumstances of life a man does not turn over and over both things and ideas in order to examine

them thoroughly under their different aspects before taking action, that man is weak and incomplete and in

danger of fatal failure. At this moment Paul was an optimist; he saw everything to advantage, and did not tell

himself than an ambitious motherinlaw might prove a tyrant. So, every evening as he left the house, he

fancied himself a married man, allured his mind with its own thought, and slipped on the slippers of wedlock

cheerfully. In the first place, he had enjoyed his freedom too long to regret the loss of it; he was tired of a

bachelor's life, which offered him nothing new; he now saw only its annoyances; whereas if he thought at

times of the difficulties of marriage, its pleasures, in which lay novelty, came far more prominently before his

"Marriage," he said to himself, "is disagreeable for people without means, but half its troubles disappear

Every day some favorable consideration swelled the advantages which he now saw in this particular alliance.

"No matter to what position I attain, Natalie will always be on the level of her part," thought he, "and that is

no small merit in a woman. How many of the Empire men I've seen who suffered horribly through their

wives! It is a great condition of happiness not to feel one's pride or one's vanity wounded by the companion

we have chosen. A man can never be really unhappy with a wellbred wife; she will never make him

ridiculous; such a woman is certain to be useful to him. Natalie will receive in her own house admirably."

So thinking, he taxed his memory as to the most distinguished women of the faubourg SaintGermain, in

order to convince himself that Natalie could, if not eclipse them, at any rate stand among them on a footing of

perfect equality. All comparisons were to her advantage, for they rested on his own imagination, which

followed his desires. Paris would have shown him daily other natures, young girls of other styles of beauty

and charm, and the multiplicity of impressions would have balanced his mind; whereas in Bordeaux Natalie

had no rivals, she was the solitary flower; moreover, she appeared to him at a moment when Paul was under

Thus these reasons of propinquity, joined to reasons of selflove and a real passion which had no means of

satisfaction except by marriage, led Paul on to an irrational love, which he had, however, the good sense to

keep to himself. He even endeavored to study Mademoiselle Evangelista as a man should who desires not to

compromise his future life; for the words of his friend de Marsay did sometimes rumble in his ears like a

warning. But, in the first place, persons accustomed to luxury have a certain indifference to it which misleads

them. They despise it, they use it; it is an instrument, and not the object of their existence. Paul never

imagined, as he observed the habits of life of the two ladies, that they covered a gulf of ruin. Then, though

there may exist some general rules to soften the asperities of marriage, there are none by which they can be

accurately foreseen and evaded. When trouble arises between two persons who have undertaken to render life

agreeable and easy to each other, it comes from the contact of continual intimacy, which, of course, does not

exist between young people before they marry, and will never exist so long as our present social laws and

customs prevail in France. All is more or less deception between the two young persons about to take each

other for life,an innocent and involuntary deception, it is true. Each endeavors to appear in a favorable

light; both take a tone and attitude conveying a more favorable idea of their nature than they are able to

maintain in after years. Real life, like the weather, is made up of gray and cloudy days alternating with those

when the sun shines and the fields are gay. Young people, however, exhibit fine weather and no clouds. Later

they attribute to marriage the evils inherent in life itself; for there is in man a disposition to lay the blame of

To discover in the demeanor, or the countenance, or the words, or the gestures of Mademoiselle Evangelista

any indication that revealed the imperfections of her character, Paul must have possessed not only the

knowledge of Lavater and Gall, but also a science in which there exists no formula of doctrine,the

individual and personal science of an observer, which, for its perfection, requires an almost universal

knowledge. Natalie's face, like that of most young girls, was impenetrable. The deep, serene peace given by

sculptors to the virgin faces of Justice and Innocence, divinities aloof from all earthly agitations, is the

greatest charm of a young girl, the sign of her purity. Nothing, as yet, has stirred her; no shattered passion, no

hope betrayed has clouded the placid expression of that pure face. Is that expression assumed? If so, there is

Natalie, closely held to the heart of her mother, had received, like other Spanish women, an education that

was solely religious, together with a few instructions from her mother as to the part in life she was called

upon to play. Consequently, the calm, untroubled expression of her face was natural. And yet it formed a

casing in which the woman was wrapped as the moth in its cocoon. Nevertheless, any man clever at handling

the scalpel of analysis might have detected in Natalie certain indications of the difficulties her character

would present when brought into contact with conjugal or social life. Her beauty, which was really

marvellous, came from extreme regularity of feature harmonizing with the proportions of the head and the

body. This species of perfection augurs ill for the mind; and there are few exceptions to the rule. All superior

nature is found to have certain slight imperfections of form which become irresistible attractions, luminous

points from which shine vivid sentiments, and on which the eye rests gladly. Perfect harmony expresses

Natalie's waist was round,a sign of strength, but also the infallible indication of a will which becomes

obstinacy in persons whose mind is neither keen nor broad. Her hands, like those of a Greek statue,

confirmed the predictions of face and figure by revealing an inclination for illogical domination, of willing

for will's sake only. Her eyebrows met,a sign, according to some observers, which indicates jealousy. The

jealousy of superior minds becomes emulation and leads to great things; that of small minds turns to hatred.

The "hate and wait" of her mother was in her nature, without disguise. Her eyes were black apparently,

though really brown with orange streaks, contrasting with her hair, of the ruddy tint so prized by the Romans,

called auburn in England, a color which often appears in the offspring of persons of jet black hair, like that of

Monsieur and Madame Evangelista. The whiteness and delicacy of Natalie's complexion gave to the contrast

of color in her eyes and hair an inexpressible charm; and yet it was a charm that was purely external; for

whenever the lines of a face are lacking in a certain soft roundness, whatever may be the finish and grace of

the details, the beauty therein expressed is not of the soul. These roses of deceptive youth will drop their

leaves, and you will be surprised in a few years to see hardness and dryness where you once admired what

Though the outlines of Natalie's face had something august about them, her chin was slightly "empate,"a

painter's expression which will serve to show the existence of sentiments the violence of which would only

become manifest in after life. Her mouth, a trifle drawn in, expressed a haughty pride in keeping with her

hand, her chin, her brows, and her beautiful figure. Andas a last diagnostic to guide the judgment of a

connoisseurNatalie's pure voice, a most seductive voice, had certain metallic tones. Softly as that brassy

ring was managed, and in spite of the grace with which its sounds ran through the compass of the voice, that

organ revealed the character of the Duke of Alba, from whom the CasaReales were collaterally descended.

These indications were those of violent passions without tenderness, sudden devotions, irreconcilable

dislikes, a mind without intelligence, and the desire to rule natural to persons who feel themselves inferior to

These defects, born of temperament and constitution, were buried in Natalie like ore in a mine, and would

only appear under the shocks and harsh treatment to which all characters are subjected in this world.

Meantime the grace and freshness of her youth, the distinction of her manners, her sacred ignorance, and the

sweetness of a young girl, gave a delicate glamour to her features which could not fail to mislead an

unthinking or superficial mind. Her mother had early taught her the trick of agreeable talk which appears to

imply superiority, replying to arguments by clever jests, and attracting by the graceful volubility beneath

which a woman hides the subsoil of her mind, as Nature disguises her barren strata beneath a wealth of

ephemeral vegetation. Natalie had the charm of children who have never known what it is to suffer. She

charmed by her frankness, and had none of that solemn air which mothers impose on their daughters by

laying down a programme of behavior and language until the time comes when they marry and are

emancipated. She was gay and natural, like any young girl who knows nothing of marriage, expects only

pleasure from it, replies to all objections with a jest, foresees no troubles, and thinks she is acquiring the right

How could Paul, who loved as men love when desire increases love, perceive in a girl of this nature whose

beauty dazzled him, the woman, such as she would probably be at thirty, when observers themselves have

been misled by these appearances? Besides, if happiness might prove difficult to find in a marriage with such

a girl, it was not impossible. Through these embryo defects shone several fine qualities. There is no good

quality which, if properly developed by the hand of an able master, will not stifle defects, especially in a

young girl who loves him. But to render ductile so intractable a woman, the iron wrist, about which de

Marsay had preached to Paul, was needful. The Parisian dandy was right. Fear, inspired by love is an

infallible instrument by which to manage the minds of women. Whoso loves, fears; whoso fears is nearer to

Had Paul the coolness, firmness, and judgment required for this struggle, which an able husband ought not to

let the wife suspect? Did Natalie love Paul? Like most young girls, Natalie mistook for love the first

emotions of instinct and the pleasure she felt in Paul's external appearance; but she knew nothing of the

things of marriage nor the demands of a home. To her, the Comte de Manerville, a rising diplomatist, to

whom the courts of Europe were known, and one of the most elegant young men in Paris, could not seem,

what perhaps he was, an ordinary man, without moral force, timid, though brave in some ways, energetic

perhaps in adversity, but helpless against the vexations and annoyances that hinder happiness. Would she, in

after years, have sufficient tact and insight to distinguish Paul's noble qualities in the midst of his minor

defects? Would she not magnify the latter and forget the former, after the manner of young wives who know

nothing of life? There comes a time when wives will pardon defects in the husband who spares her

annoyances, considering annoyances in the same category as misfortunes. What conciliating power, what

wise experience would uphold and enlighten the home of this young pair? Paul and his wife would doubtless

think they loved when they had really not advanced beyond the endearments and compliments of the

honeymoon. Would Paul in that early period yield to the tyranny of his wife, instead of establishing his

empire? Could Paul say, "No?" All was peril to a man so weak where even a strong man ran some risks.

The subject of this Study is not the transition of a bachelor into a married man,a picture which, if broadly

composed, would not lack the attraction which the inner struggles of our nature and feelings give to the

commonest situations in life. The events and the ideas which led to the marriage of Paul with Natalie

Evangelista are an introduction to our real subject, which is to sketch the great comedy that precedes, in

France, all conjugal pairing. This Scene, until now singularly neglected by our dramatic authors, although it

offers novel resources to their wit, controlled Paul's future life and was now awaited by Madame Evangelista

with feelings of terror. We mean the discussion which takes place on the subject of the marriage contract in

all families, whether noble or bourgeois, for human passions are as keenly excited by small interests as by

large ones. These comedies, played before a notary, all resemble, more or less, the one we shall now relate,

the interest of which will be far less in the pages of this book than in the memories of married persons.

At the beginning of the winter of 1822, Paul de Manerville made a formal request, through his greataunt, the

Baronne de Maulincour, for the hand of Mademoiselle Natalie Evangelista. Though the baroness never stayed

more than two months in Medoc, she remained on this occasion till the last of October, in order to assist her

nephew through the affair and play the part of a mother to him. After conveying the first suggestions to

Madame Evangelista the experienced old woman returned to inform Paul of the results of the overture.

"My child," she said, "the affair is won. In talking of property, I found that Madame Evangelista gives

nothing of her own to her daughter. Mademoiselle Natalie's dowry is her patrimony. Marry her, my dear boy.

Men who have a name and an estate to transmit, a family to continue, must, sooner or later, end in marriage. I

wish I could see my dear Auguste taking that course. You can now carry on the marriage without me; I have

nothing to give you but my blessing, and women as old as I are out of place at a wedding. I leave for Paris

tomorrow. When you present your wife in society I shall be able to see her and assist her far more to the

purpose than now. If you had had no house in Paris I would gladly have arranged the second floor of mine for

"Dear aunt," said Paul, "I thank you heartily. But what do you mean when you say that the mother gives

"The mother, my dear boy, is a sly cat, who takes advantage of her daughter's beauty to impose conditions

and allow you only that which she cannot prevent you from having; namely, the daughter's fortune from her

father. We old people know the importance of inquiring closely, What has he? What has she? I advise you

therefore to give particular instructions to your notary. The marriage contract, my dear child, is the most

sacred of all duties. If your father and your mother had not made their bed properly you might now be

sleeping without sheets. You will have children, they are the commonest result of marriage, and you must

Madame de Maulincour departed, having plunged Paul into a state of extreme perplexity. His motherinlaw

a sly cat! Must he struggle for his interests in the marriage contract? Was it necessary to defend them? Who

He followed the advice of his aunt and confided the drawingup of the marriage contract to Maitre Mathias.

But these threatened discussions oppressed him, and he went to see Madame Evangelista and announce his

intentions in a state of rather lively agitation. Like all timid men, he shrank from allowing the distrust his aunt

had put into his mind to be seen; in fact, he considered it insulting. To avoid even a slight jar with a person so

imposing to his mind as his future motherinlaw, he proceeded to state his intentions with the

"Madame," he said, choosing a moment when Natalie was absent from the room, "you know, of course, what

a family notary is. Mine is a worthy old man, to whom it would be a sincere grief if he were not entrusted

"Why, of course!" said Madame Evangelista, interrupting him, "but are not marriage contracts always made

The time that Paul took to reply to this question was occupied by Madame Evangelista in asking herself,

"What is he thinking of?" for women possess in an eminent degree the art of reading thoughts from the play

of countenance. She divined the instigations of the great aunt in the embarrassed glance and the agitated

"At last," she thought to herself, "the fatal day has come; the crisis beginshow will it end? My notary is

Monsieur Solonet," she said, after a pause. "Yours, I think you said, is Monsieur Mathias; I will invite them

to dinner tomorrow, and they can come to an understanding then. It is their business to conciliate our

interests without our interference; just as good cooks are expected to furnish good food without instructions."

"Yes, you are right," said Paul, letting a faint sigh of relief escape from him.

By a singular transposition of parts, Paul, innocent of all wrong doing, trembled, while Madame

The widow owed her daughter onethird of the fortune left by Monsieur Evangelista,namely, nearly

twelve hundred thousand francs,and she knew herself unable to pay it, even by taking the whole of her

property to do so. She would therefore be placed at the mercy of a soninlaw. Though she might be able to

control Paul if left to himself, would he, when enlightened by his notary, agree to release her from rendering

her account as guardian of her daughter's patrimony? If Paul withdrew his proposals all Bordeaux would

know the reason and Natalie's future marriage would be made impossible. This mother, who desired the

happiness of her daughter, this woman, who from infancy had lived honorably, was aware that on the morrow

she must become dishonest. Like those great warriors who fain would blot from their lives the moment when

they had felt a secret cowardice, she ardently desired to cut this inevitable day from the record of hers. Most

assuredly some hairs on her head must have whitened during the night, when, face to face with facts, she

bitterly regretted her extravagance as she felt the hard necessities of the situation.

Among these necessities was that of confiding the truth to her notary, for whom she sent in the morning as

soon as she rose. She was forced to reveal to him a secret defaulting she had never been willing to admit to

herself, for she had steadily advanced to the abyss, relying on some chance accident, which never happened,

to relieve her. There rose in her soul a feeling against Paul, that was neither dislike, nor aversion, nor

anything, as yet, unkind; but HE was the cause of this crisis; the opposing party in this secret suit; he became,

without knowing it, an innocent enemy she was forced to conquer. What human being did ever yet love his or

her dupe? Compelled to deceive and trick him if she could, the Spanish woman resolved, like other women,

to put her whole force of character into the struggle, the dishonor of which could be absolved by victory only.

In the stillness of the night she excused her conduct to her own mind by a tissue of arguments in which her

pride predominated. Natalie had shared the benefit of her extravagance. There was not a single base or

ignoble motive in what she had done. She was no accountant, but was that a crime, a delinquency? A man

was only too lucky to obtain a wife like Natalie without a penny. Such a treasure bestowed upon him might

surely release her from a guardianship account. How many men had bought the women they loved by greater

sacrifices? Why should a man do less for a wife than for a mistress? Besides, Paul was a nullity, a man of no

force, incapable; she would spend the best resources of her mind upon him and open to him a fine career; he

should owe his future power and position to her influence; in that way she could pay her debt. He would

indeed be a fool to refuse such a future; and for what? a few paltry thousands, more or less. He would be

"But," she added, to herself, "if the negotiation does not succeed at once, I shall leave Bordeaux. I can still

find a good marriage for Natalie by investing the proceeds of what is left, house and diamonds and

When a strong soul constructs a way of ultimate escape,as Richelieu did at Brouage,and holds in

reserve a vigorous end, the resolution becomes a lever which strengthens its immediate way. The thought of

this finale in case of failure comforted Madame Evangelista, who fell asleep with all the more confidence as

This was a young man named Solonet, considered the ablest notary in Bordeaux; now twentyseven years of

age and decorated with the Legion of honor for having actively contributed to the second return of the

Bourbons. Proud and happy to be received in the home of Madame Evangelista, less as a notary than as

belonging to the royalist society of Bordeaux, Solonet had conceived for that fine setting sun one of those

passions which women like Madame Evangelista repulse, although flattered and graciously allowing them to

exist upon the surface. Solonet remained therefore in a selfsatisfied condition of hope and becoming respect.

Being sent for, he arrived the next morning with the promptitude of a slave and was received by the

coquettish widow in her bedroom, where she allowed him to find her in a very becoming dishabille.

"Can I," she said, "count upon your discretion and your entire devotion in a discussion which will take place

in my house this evening? You will readily understand that it relates to the marriage of my daughter."

"My dear lady, that is nothing to be troubled about," said Maitre Solonet, assuming a confident air as soon as

his client had given him the exact figures. "The question is how have you conducted yourself toward

Monsieur de Manerville? In this matter questions of manner and deportment are of greater importance than

Madame Evangelista wrapped herself in dignity. The notary learned to his satisfaction that until the present

moment his client's relations to Paul had been distant and reserved, and that partly from native pride and

partly from involuntary shrewdness she had treated the Comte de Manerville as in some sense her inferior

and as though it were an honor for him to be allowed to marry Mademoiselle Evangelista. She assured

Solonet that neither she nor her daughter could be suspected of any mercenary interests in the marriage; that

they had the right, should Paul make any financial difficulties, to retreat from the affair to an illimitable

distance; and finally, that she had already acquired over her future soninlaw a very remarkable

"If that is so," said Solonet, "tell me what are the utmost concessions you are willing to make."

"A woman's answer," cried Solonet. "Madame, are you anxious to marry Mademoiselle Natalie?"

"And you want a receipt for the eleven hundred and fiftysix thousand francs, for which you are responsible

on the guardianship account which the law obliges you to render to your soninlaw?"

"Well, then, I must reflect on the necessary means to that end; it will need all our cleverness to manage our

forces. I will give you some instructions on my arrival this evening; follow them carefully, and I think I may

promise you a successful issue. Is the Comte de Manerville in love with Mademoiselle Natalie?" he asked as

"That is not enough. Does he desire her to the point of disregarding all pecuniary difficulties?"

"That's what I call having a lien upon a daughter's property," cried the notary. "Make her look her best

This last argument seemed so cogent to Madame Evangelista that she superintended Natalie's toilet herself, as

much perhaps to watch her daughter as to make her the innocent accomplice of her financial conspiracy.

With her hair dressed a la Sevigne and wearing a gown of white tulle adorned with pink ribbons, Natalie

seemed to her mother so beautiful as to guarantee victory. When the lady'smaid left the room and Madame

Evangelista was certain that no one could overhear her, she arranged a few curls on her daughter's head by

"Dear child," she said, in a voice that was firm apparently, "do you sincerely love the Comte de Manerville?"

"Why do you ask that question, little mother? and today more than yesterday> Why have you thrown me

"You do not love him, my dear," said the mother, kissing her daughter's forehead.

"I wished to know if you desired the marriage without being madly in love with the husband."

"And you are right. He is a count; we will make him a peer of France between us; nevertheless, there are

"Difficulties between persons who love each other? Oh, no. The heart of the Pink of Fashion is too firmly

planted here," she said, with a pretty gesture, "to make the very slightest objection. I am sure of that."

"Good! You are a CasaReale. But suppose, though he madly loves you, suppose certain discussions and

difficulties should arise, not of his own making, but which he must decide in your interests as well as in

minehey, Natalie, what then? Without lowering your dignity, perhaps a little softness in your manner

might decide hima word, a tone, a mere nothing. Men are so made; they resist a serious argument, but they

"I understand! a little touch to make my Favori leap the barrier," said Natalie, making the gesture of striking a

"My darling! I ask nothing that resembles seduction. You and I have sentiments of the old Castilian honor

which will never permit us to pass certain limits. Count Paul shall know our situation."

"You would not understand it. But I tell you now that if after seeing you in all your glory his look betrays the

slightest hesitation,and I shall watch him,on that instant I shall break off the marriage; I will liquidate

my property, leave Bordeaux, and go to Douai, to be near the Claes. Madame Claes is our relation through

the Temnincks. Then I'll marry you to a peer of France, and take refuge in a convent myself, that I may give

"I have never seen you so beautiful as you are now," replied her mother. "Be a little coquettish, and all is

Madame Evangelista left Natalie to her thoughts, and went to arrange her own toilet in such a way that would

bear comparison with that of her daughter. If Natalie ought to make herself attractive to Paul she ought, none

the less, to inflame the ardor of her champion Solonet. The mother and daughter were therefore under arms

when Paul arrived, bearing the bouquet which for the last few months he had daily offered to his love. All

This day brought to Paul the first skirmish of that long and wearisome warfare called marriage. It is therefore

necessary to state the forces on both sides, the position of the belligerent bodies, and the ground on which

To maintain a struggle, the importance of which had wholly escaped him, Paul's only auxiliary was the old

notary, Mathias. Both were about to be confronted, unaware and defenceless, by a most unexpected

circumstance; to be pressed by an enemy whose strategy was planned, and driven to decide on a course

without having time to reflect upon it. Where is the man who would not have succumbed, even though

assisted by Cujas and Barthole? How should he look for deceit and treachery where all seemed compliant and

natural? What could old Mathias do alone against Madame Evangelista, against Solonet, against Natalie,

especially when a client in love goes over to the enemy as soon as the rising conflict threatens his happiness?

Already Paul was damaging his cause by making the customary lover's speeches, to which his passion gave

excessive value in the ears of Madame Evangelista, whose object it was to drive him to commit himself.

The matrimonial condottieri now about to fight for their clients, whose personal powers were to be so vitally

important in this solemn encounter, the two notaries, on short, represent individually the old and the new

Maitre Mathias was a worthy old gentleman sixtynine years of age, who took great pride in his forty years'

exercise of the profession. His huge gouty feet were encased in shoes with silver buckles, making a ridiculous

termination to legs so spindling, with knees so bony, that when he crossed them they made you think of the

emblems on a tombstone. His puny little thighs, lost in a pair of wide black breeches fastened with buckles,

seemed to bend beneath the weight of a round stomach and a torso developed, like that of most sedentary

persons, into a stout barrel, always buttoned into a green coat with square tails, which no man could

remember to have ever seen new. His hair, well brushed and powdered, was tied in a rat's tail that lay

between the collar of his coat and that of his waistcoat, which was white, with a pattern of flowers. With his

round head, his face the color of a vineleaf, his blue eyes, a trumpet nose, a thicklipped mouth, and a

doublechin, the dear old fellow excited, whenever he appeared among strangers who did not know him, that

satirical laugh which Frenchmen so generously bestow on the ludicrous creations Dame Nature occasionally

allows herself, which Art delights in exaggerating under the name of caricatures.

But in Maitre Mathias, mind had triumphed over form; the qualities of his soul had vanquished the oddities of

his body. The inhabitants of Bordeaux, as a rule, testified a friendly respect and a deference that was full of

esteem for him. The old man's voice went to their hearts and sounded there with the eloquence of uprightness.

His craft consisted in going straight to the fact, overturning all subterfuge and evil devices by plain

questionings. His quick perception, his long training in his profession gave him that divining sense which

goes to the depths of conscience and reads its secret thoughts. Though grave and deliberate in business, the

patriarch could be gay with the gaiety of our ancestors. He could risk a song after dinner, enjoy all family

festivities, celebrate the birthdays of grandmothers and children, and bury with due solemnity the Christmas

log. He loved to send presents at New Year, and eggs at Easter; he believed in the duties of a godfather, and

never deserted the customs which colored the life of the olden time. Maitre Mathias was a noble and

venerable relic of the notaries, obscure great men, who gave no receipt for the millions entrusted to them, but

returned those millions in the sacks they were delivered in, tied with the same twine; men who fulfilled their

trusts to the letter, drew honest inventories, took fatherly interest in their clients, often barring the way to

extravagance and dissipation, men to whom families confided their secrets, and who felt so responsible for

any error in their deeds that they meditated long and carefully over them. Never during his whole notarial

life, had any client found reason to complain of a bad investment or an illplaced mortgage. His own fortune,

slowly but honorably acquired, had come to him as the result of a thirty years' practice and careful economy.

He had established in life fourteen of his clerks. Religious, and generous in secret, Mathias was found

whenever good was to be done without remuneration. An active member on hospital and other benevolent

committees, he subscribed the largest sums to relieve all sudden misfortunes and emergencies, as well as to

create certain useful permanent institutions; consequently, neither he nor his wife kept a carriage. Also his

word was felt to be sacred, and his coffers held as much of the money of others as a bank; and also, we may

add, he went by the name of "Our good Monsieur Mathias," and when he died, three thousand persons

Solonet was the style of young notary who comes in humming a tune, affects lightheartedness, declares that

business is better done with a laugh than seriously. He is the notary captain of the national guard, who

dislikes to be taken for a notary, solicits the cross of the Legion of honor, keeps his cabriolet, and leaves the

verification of his deeds to his clerks; he is the notary who goes to balls and theatres, buys pictures and plays

at ecarte; he has coffers in which gold is received on deposit and is later returned in bankbills,a notary

who follows his epoch, risks capital in doubtful investments, speculates with all he can lay his hands on, and

expects to retire with an income of thirty thousand francs after ten years' practice; in short, the notary whose

cleverness comes of his duplicity, whom many men fear as an accomplice possessing their secrets, and who

sees in his practice a means of ultimately marrying some bluestockinged heiress.

When the slender, fairhaired Solonet, curled, perfumed, and booted like the leading gentleman at the

Vaudeville, and dressed like a dandy whose most important business is a duel, entered Madame Evangelista's

salon, preceding his brother notary, whose advance was delayed by a twinge of the gout, the two men

presented to the life one of those famous caricatures entitled "Former Times and the Present Day," which had

such eminent success under the Empire. If Madame and Mademoiselle Evangelista to whom the "good

Monsieur Mathias," was personally unknown, felt, on first seeing him, a slight inclination to laugh, they were

soon touched by the oldfashioned grace with which he greeted them. The words he used were full of that

amenity which amiable old men convey as much by the ideas they suggest as by the manner in which they

express them. The younger notary, with his flippant tone, seemed on a lower plane. Mathias showed his

superior knowledge of life by the reserved manner with which he accosted Paul. Without compromising his

white hairs, he showed that he respected the young man's nobility, while at the same time he claimed the

honor due to old age, and made it felt that social rights are natural. Solonet's bow and greeting, on the

contrary, expressed a sense of perfect equality, which would naturally affront the pretensions of a man of

society and make the notary ridiculous in the eyes of a real noble. Solonet made a motion, somewhat too

familiar, to Madame Evangelista, inviting her to a private conference in the recess of a window. For some

minutes they talked to each other in a low voice, giving way now and then to laughter,no doubt to lessen in

the minds of others the importance of the conversation, in which Solonet was really communicating to his

Madame Evangelista did not choose to tell her notary the motive of this heroism, which struck him greatly.

Solonet's zeal might have cooled had he known that his client was really intending to leave Bordeaux. She

had not as yet said anything about that intention to Paul, in order not to alarm him with the preliminary steps

and circumlocutions which must be taken before he entered on the political life she planned for him.

After dinner the two plenipotentiaries left the loving pair with the mother, and betook themselves to an

adjoining salon where their conference was arranged to take place. A dual scene then followed on this

domestic stage: in the chimneycorner of the great salon a scene of love, in which to all appearances life was

smiles and joy; in the other room, a scene of gravity and gloom, where selfish interests, baldly proclaimed,

"My dear master," said Solonet, "the document can remain under your lock and key; I know very well what I

owe to my old preceptor." Mathias bowed gravely. "But," continued Solonet, unfolding the rough copy of a

deed he had made his clerk draw up, "as we are the oppressed party, I mean the daughter, I have written the

contractwhich will save you trouble. We marry with our rights under the rule of community of interests;

with general donation of our property to each other in case of death without heirs; if not, donation of

onefourth as life interest, and onefourth in fee; the sum placed in community of interests to be onefourth

of the respective property of each party; the survivor to possess the furniture without appraisal. It's all as

"Ta, ta, ta, ta," said Mathias, "I don't do business as one sings a tune. What are your claims?"

"Our property," replied Mathias, "is: the estate of Lanstrac, which brings in a rental of twentythree thousand

francs a year, not counting the natural products. Item: the farms of Grassol and Guadet, each worth three

thousand six hundred francs a year. Item: the vineyard of BelleRose, yielding in ordinary years sixteen

thousand francs; total, fortysix thousand two hundred francs a year. Item: the patrimonial mansion at

Bordeaux taxed for nine hundred francs. Item: a handsome house, between court and garden in Paris, rue de

la Pepiniere, taxed for fifteen hundred francs. These pieces of property, the titledeeds of which I hold, are

derived from our father and mother, except the house in Paris, which we bought ourselves. We must also

reckon in the furniture of the two houses, and that of the chateau of Lanstrac, estimated at four hundred and

fifty thousand francs. There's the table, the cloth, and the first course. What do you bring for the second

"Specify them, my friend," said Mathias. "What do you bring us? Where is the inventory of the property left

by Monsieur Evangelista? Show me the liquidation, the investment of the amount. Where is your capital?

if there is any capital. Where is your landed property?if you have any. In short, let us see your

guardianship account, and tell us what you bring and what your mother will secure to us."

"He wishes to make her his wife if the marriage can be suitably arranged," said the old notary. "I am not a

"The marriage will be off unless you show generous feeling; and for this reason," continued Solonet. "No

inventory was made at the death of our husband; we are Spaniards, Creoles, and know nothing of French

laws. Besides, we were too deeply grieved at our loss to think at such a time of the miserable formalities

which occupy cold hearts. It is publicly well known that our late husband adored us, and that we mourned for

him sincerely. If we did have a settlement of accounts with a short inventory attached, made, as one may say,

by common report, you can thank our surrogate guardian, who obliged us to establish a status and assign to

our daughter a fortune, such as it is, at a time when we were forced to withdraw from London our English

securities, the capital of which was immense, and reinvest the proceeds in Paris, where interests were

"Don't talk nonsense to me. There are various ways of verifying the property. What was the amount of your

legacy tax? Those figures will enable us to get at the total. Come to the point. Tell us frankly what you

received from the father's estate and how much remains of it. If we are very much in love we'll see then what

"If you are marrying us for our money you can go about your business. We have claims to more than a

million; but all that remains to our mother is this house and furniture and four hundred odd thousand francs

invested about 1817 in the Fivepercents, which yield about fortythousand francs a year."

"Then why do you live in a style that requires one hundred thousand a year at the least?" cried Mathias,

"Our daughter has cost us the eyes out of our head," replied Solonet. "Besides, we like to spend money. Your

"With the fifty thousand francs a year which belong to Mademoiselle Natalie you could have brought her up

handsomely without coming to ruin. But if you have squandered everything while you were a girl what will it

"Then drop us altogether," said Solonet. "The handsomest girl in Bordeaux has a right to spend more than she

"Very good, old father Cassandra, go and tell your client that we haven't a penny," thought Solonet, who, in

the solitude of his study, had strategically massed his forces, drawn up his propositions, manned the

drawbridge of discussion, and prepared the point at which the opposing party, thinking the affair a failure,

could suddenly be led into a compromise which would end in the triumph of his client.

The white dress with its rosecolored ribbons, the Sevigne curls, Natalie's tiny foot, her winning glance, her

pretty fingers constantly employed in adjusting curls that needed no adjustment, these girlish manoeuvres like

those of a peacock spreading his tail, had brought Paul to the point at which his future motherinlaw desired

to see him. He was intoxicated with love, and his eyes, the sure thermometer of the soul, indicated the degree

"Natalie is so beautiful," he whispered to the mother, "that I can conceive the frenzy which leads a man to

"Lover's talk, my dear count. My husband never said such charming things to me; but he married me without

"You know how I love you, my dear son," she answered, pressing his hand. "I must indeed love you well to

"Give me, give me?" said the young girl, waving a screen of Indian feathers, "what are you whispering about

"I was telling her," replied Paul, "how much I love you, since etiquette forbids me to tell it to you."

"Ah! you know too well how to offer the jewels of flattery. Shall I tell you my private opinion about you?

Well, I think you have more mind than a lover ought to have. To be the Pink of Fashion and a wit as well,"

she added, dropping her eyes, "is to have too many advantages: a man should choose between them. I fear

"We must not talk in this way. Mamma, do you not think that this conversation is dangerous inasmuch as the

"I should like to know what Achilles and Nestor are saying to each other in the next room," said Natalie,

nodding toward the door of the little salon with a childlike expression of curiosity.

"They are talking of our children and our death and a lot of other such trifles; they are counting our gold to

see if we can keep five horses in the stables. They are talking also of deeds of gift; but there, I have

"Have I not given myself wholly to you?" he said, looking straight at the girl, whose beauty was enhanced by

"My dear child, you have a lifetime before you in which to return it. To make the daily happiness of a home,

"How could I fail to like the place where you were born?" she answered. "I wish I could see your house."

"OUR house," said Paul. "Do you not want to know if I shall understand your tastes and arrange the house to

suit you? Your mother had made a husband's task most difficult; you have always been so happy! But where

"My dear children," said Madame Evangelista, "do you feel willing to stay in Bordeaux after your marriage?

If you have the courage to face the people here who know you and will watch and hamper you, so be it! But

if you feel that desire for a solitude together which can hardly be expressed, let us go to Paris were the life of

a young couple can pass unnoticed in the stream. There alone you can behave as lovers without fearing to

"You are quite right," said Paul, "but I shall hardly have time to get my house ready. However, I will write

tonight to de Marsay, the friend on whom I can always count to get things done for me."

At the moment when Paul, like all young men accustomed to satisfy their desires without previous

calculation, was inconsiderately binding himself to the expenses of a stay in Paris, Maitre Mathias entered the

"What is it, my friend?" asked Paul, following the old man to the recess of a window.

"Monsieur le comte," said the honest lawyer, "there is not a penny of dowry. My advice is: put off the

conference to another day, so that you may gain time to consider your proper course."

Though Madame Evangelista's face was calm, no Jew of the middle ages ever suffered greater torture in his

caldron of boiling oil than she was enduring in her violet velvet gown. Solonet had pledged the marriage to

her, but she was ignorant of the means and conditions of success. The anguish of this uncertainty was

intolerable. Possibly she owed her safety to her daughter's disobedience. Natalie had considered the advice of

her mother and noted her anxiety. When she saw the success of her own coquetry she was struck to the heart

with a variety of contradictory thoughts. Without blaming her mother, she was half ashamed of manoeuvres

the object of which was, undoubtedly, some personal game. She was also seized with a jealous curiosity

which is easily conceived. She wanted to find out if Paul loved her well enough to rise above the obstacles

that her mother foresaw and which she now saw clouding the face of the old lawyer. These ideas and

sentiments prompted her to an action of loyalty which became her well. But, for all that, the blackest perfidy

"Paul," she said in a low voice, and she so called him for the first time, "if any difficulties as to property arise

to separate us, remember that I free you from all engagements, and will allow you to let the blame of such a

She put such dignity into this expression of her generosity that Paul believed in her disinterestedness and in

her ignorance of the strange fact that his notary had just told to him. He pressed the young girl's hand and

kissed it like a man to whom love is more precious than wealth. Natalie left the room.

"Sacapapier! Monsieur le comte, you are committing a great folly," said the old notary, rejoining his client.

Paul grew thoughtful. He had expected to unite Natalie's fortune with his own and thus obtain for his married

life an income of one hundred thousand francs a year; and however much a man may be in love he cannot

pass without emotion and anxiety from the prospect of a hundred thousand to the certainty of fortysix

thousand a year and the duty of providing for a woman accustomed to every luxury.

"My daughter is no longer here," said Madame Evangelista, advancing almost regally toward her soninlaw

"Madame," replied Mathias, alarmed at Paul's silence, "an obstacle which I fear will delay us has arisen"

At these words, Maitre Solonet issued from the little salon and cut short the old man's speech by a remark

which restored Paul's composure. Overcome by the remembrance of his gallant speeches and his loverlike

behavior, he felt unable to disown them or to change his course. He longed, for the moment, to fling himself

"There is a way," said the younger notary, with an easy air, "by which madame can meet the payment which

is due to her daughter. Madame Evangelista possesses forty thousand francs a year from an investment in the

Fivepercents, the capital of which will soon be at par, if not above it. We may therefore reckon it at eight

hundred thousand francs. This house and garden are fully worth two hundred thousand. On that estimate,

Madame can convey by the marriage contract the titles of that property to her daughter, reserving only a life

interest in it for I conclude that Monsieur le comte could hardly wish to leave his motherinlaw without

means? Though Madame has certainly run through her fortune, she is still able to make good that of her

"Women are most unfortunate in having no knowledge of business," said Madame Evangelista. "Have I titles

Paul was in a sort of ecstasy as he listened to this proposed arrangement. The old notary, seeing the trap, and

his client with one foot caught in it, was petrified for a moment, as he said to himself:

"If madame will follow my advice," said Solonet, "she will secure her own tranquillity. By sacrificing herself

in this way she may be sure that no minors will ultimately harass herfor we never know who may live and

who may die! Monsieur le comte will then give due acknowledgment in the marriage contract of having

Mathias could not restrain the indignation which shone in his eyes and flushed his face.

"One million, one hundred and fiftysix thousand francs according to the document"

"Why don't you ask Monsieur le comte to make over 'hic et nunc' his whole fortune to his future wife?" said

Mathias. "It would be more honest than what you now propose. I will not allow the ruin of the Comte de

He made a step as if to address his client, who was silent throughout this scene as if dazed by it; but he turned

"Do not suppose, madame, that I think you a party to these ideas of my brother notary. I consider you an

"You know that there can be no offence between you and me," replied Mathias. "Madame," he added, "you

ought to know the result of this proposed arrangement. You are still young and beautiful enough to marry

againAh! madame," said the old man, noting her gesture, "who can answer for themselves on that point?"

"I did not suppose, monsieur," said Madame Evangelista, "that, after remaining a widow for the seven best

years of my life, and refusing the most brilliant offers for my daughter's sake, I should be suspected of such a

piece of folly as marrying again at thirtynine years of age. If we were not talking business I should regard

"Would it not be more impertinent if I suggested that you could not marry again?"

"Well," resumed Maitre Mathias, "we will say nothing of your marriage. You may, and we all desire it, live

for fortyfive years to come. Now, if you keep for yourself the lifeinterest in your daughter's patrimony,

"What does that mean?" said the widow. "I don't understand being laid on a shelf."

"I'll translate it for you," said Mathias. "If your children are wise they will think of the future. To think of the

future means laying by half our income, provided we have only two children, to whom we are bound to give

a fine education and a handsome dowry. Your daughter and soninlaw will, therefore, be reduced to live on

twenty thousand francs a year, though each has spent fifty thousand while still unmarried. But that is nothing.

The law obliges my client to account, hereafter, to his children for the eleven hundred and fiftysix thousand

francs of their mother's patrimony; yet he may not have received them if his wife should die and madame

should survive her, which may very well happen. To sign such a contract is to fling one's self into the river,

bound hand and foot. You wish to make your daughter happy, do you not? If she loves her husband, a fact

which notaries never doubt, she will share his troubles. Madame, I see enough in this scheme to make her die

of grief and anxiety; you are consigning her to poverty. Yes, madame, poverty; to persons accustomed to the

use of one hundred thousand francs a year, twenty thousand is poverty. Moreover, if Monsieur le comte, out

of love for his wife, were guilty of extravagance, she could ruin him by exercising her rights when

misfortunes overtook him. I plead now for you, for them, for their children, for every one."

"The old fellow makes a lot of smoke with his cannon," thought Maitre Solonet, giving his client a look,

"There is one way of combining all interests," replied Madame Evangelista, calmly. "I can reserve to myself

only the necessary cost of living in a convent, and my children can have my property at once. I can renounce

"Madame," said the old notary, "let us take time to consider and weigh, deliberately, the course we had best

"Good heavens! monsieur," cried Madame Evangelista, who saw defeat in delay, "everything has already

been considered and weighed. I was ignorant of what the process of marriage is in France; I am a Spaniard

and a Creole. I did not know that in order to marry my daughter it was necessary to reckon up the days which

God may still grant me; that my child would suffer because I live; that I do harm by living, and by having

lived! When my husband married me I had nothing but my name and my person. My name alone was a

fortune to him, which dwarfed his own. What wealth can equal that of a great name? My dowry was beauty,

virtue, happiness, birth, education. Can money give those treasures? If Natalie's father could overhear this

conversation, his generous soul would be wounded forever, and his happiness in paradise destroyed. I

dissipated, foolishly, perhaps, a few of his millions without a quiver ever coming to his eyelids. Since his

death, I have grown economical and orderly in comparison with the life he encouraged me to leadCome,

No descriptive language can express the confusion and shock which the words, "break off," introduced into

the conversation. It is enough to say that these four apparently wellbred persons all talked at once.

"In Spain people marry in the Spanish fashion, or as they please; but in France they marry according to

"Ah, madame," cried Paul, coming out of his stupefaction, "you mistake my feelings."

"This is not a matter of feeling," said the old notary, trying to stop his client from concessions. "We are

concerned now with the interests and welfare of three generations. Have WE wasted the missing millions?

We are simply endeavoring to solve difficulties of which we are wholly guiltless."

"Haggle! do you call it haggling to defend the interests of father and mother and children?" said Mathias.

"Yes," said Paul, continuing his remarks to Madame Evangelista, "I deplore the extravagance of my youth,

which does not permit me to stop this discussion, as you deplore your ignorance of business and your

involuntary wastefulness. God is my witness that I am not thinking, at this moment, of myself. A simple life

at Lanstrac does not alarm me; but how can I ask Mademoiselle Natalie to renounce her tastes, her habits?

"Monsieur Evangelista was in business," replied the old notary; "he played in the great game of commerce;

he despatched ships and made enormous sums; we are simply a landowner, whose capital is invested, whose

"There is still a way to harmonize all interests," said Solonet, uttering this sentence in a high falsetto tone,

which silenced the other three and drew their eyes and their attention upon himself.

This young man was not unlike a skilful coachman who holds the reins of four horses, and amuses himself by

first exciting his animals and then subduing them. He had let loose these passions, and then, in turn, he

calmed them, making Paul, whose life and happiness were in the balance, sweat in his harness, as well as his

"Madame Evangelista," he continued, after a slight pause, "can resign her investment in the Fivepercents at

once, and she can sell this house. I can get three hundred thousand francs for it by cutting the land into small

lots. Out of that sum she can give you one hundred and fifty thousand francs. In this way she pays down nine

hundred thousand of her daughter's patrimony, immediately. That, to be sure, is not all that she owes her

At this question, which appeared to imply consent, Solonet said, softly, to himself, "Well done, old fox! I've

"Madame," he replied, aloud, "will keep the hundred and fifty thousand francs remaining from the sale of the

house. This sum, added to the value of her furniture, can be invested in an annuity which will give her twenty

thousand francs a year. Monsieur le comte can arrange to provide a residence for her under his roof. Lanstrac

is a large house. You have also a house in Paris," he went on, addressing himself to Paul. "Madame can,

therefore, live with you wherever you are. A widow with twenty thousand francs a year, and no household to

maintain, is richer than madame was when she possessed her whole fortune. Madame Evangelista has only

this one daughter; Monsieur le comte is without relations; it will be many years before your heirs attain their

majority; no conflict of interests is, therefore, to be feared. A motherinlaw and a soninlaw placed in

such relations will form a household of united interests. Madame Evangelista can make up for the remaining

deficit by paying a certain sum for her support from her annuity, which will ease your way. We know that

madame is too generous and too largeminded to be willing to be a burden on her children. In this way you

can make one household, united and happy, and be able to spend, in your own right, one hundred thousand

francs a year. Is not that sum sufficient, Monsieur le comte, to enjoy, in all countries, the luxuries of life, and

to satisfy all your wants and caprices? Believe me, a young couple often feel the need of a third member of

the household; and, I ask you, what third member could be so desirable as a good mother?"

Shocked to see his client's joy at this proposal, Mathias sat down on an ottoman, his head in his hands,

plunged in reflections that were evidently painful. He knew well the involved phraseology in which notaries

and lawyers wrap up, intentionally, malicious schemes, and he was not the man to be taken in by it. He now

began, furtively, to watch his brother notary and Madame Evangelista as they conversed with Paul,

endeavoring to detect some clew to the deeplaid plot which was beginning to appear upon the surface.

"Monsieur," said Paul to Solonet, "I thank you for the pains you take to conciliate our interests. This

arrangement will solve all difficulties far more happily than I expectedif," he added, turning to Madame

Evangelista, "it is agreeable to you, madame; for I could not desire anything that did not equally please you."

"I?" she said; "all that makes the happiness of my children is joy to me. Do not consider me in any way."

"That would not be right," said Paul, eagerly. "If your future is not honorably provided for, Natalie and I

"Ah!" thought old Mathias, "they'll make him kiss the rod before they scourge him."

"You may feel quite satisfied," continued Solonet. "There are so many enterprises going on in Bordeaux at

this moment that investments for annuities can be negotiated on very advantageous terms. After deducting

from the proceeds of the house and furniture the hundred and fifty thousand francs we owe you, I think I can

guarantee to madame that two hundred and fifty thousand will remain to her. I take upon myself to invest that

sum in a first mortgage on property worth a million, and to obtain ten per cent for it,twentyfive thousand

francs a year. Consequently, we are marrying on nearly equal fortunes. In fact, against your fortysix

thousand francs a year, Mademoiselle Natalie brings you forty thousand a year in the Fivepercents, and

one hundred and fifty thousand in a round sum, which gives, in all, fortyseven thousand francs a year."

As he ended his speech, Solonet had cast a sidelong glance at his client, intercepted by Mathias, which meant:

"But," exclaimed Madame Evangelista, in tones of joy that did not seem to be feigned, "I can give Natalie my

"We can have them appraised," said the notary. "This will change the whole face of things. Madame can then

keep the proceeds of her house, all but fifty thousand francs. Nothing will prevent Monsieur le comte from

giving us a receipt in due form, as having received, in full, Mademoiselle Natalie's inheritance from her

father; this will close, of course, the guardianship account. If madame, with Spanish generosity, robs herself

in this way to fulfil her obligations, the least that her children can do is to give her a full receipt."

"Nothing could be more just than that," said Paul. "I am simply overwhelmed by these generous proposals."

Maitre Mathias detected a look of joy on her face when she saw that the difficulties were being removed: that

joy, and the previous forgetfulness of the diamonds, which were now brought forward like fresh troops,

"The scene has been prepared between them as gamblers prepare the cards to ruin a pigeon," thought the old

notary. "Is this poor boy, whom I saw born, doomed to be plucked alive by that woman, roasted by his very

love, and devoured by his wife? I, who have nursed these fine estates for years with such care, am I to see

them ruined in a single night? Three million and a half to be hypothecated for eleven hundred thousand francs

Discovering thus in the soul of the elder woman intentions which, without involving crime, theft, swindling,

or any actually evil or blameworthy action, nevertheless belonged to all those criminalities in embryo, Maitre

Mathias felt neither sorrow nor generous indignation. He was not the Misanthrope; he was an old notary,

accustomed in his business to the shrewd calculations of worldly people, to those clever bits of treachery

which do more fatal injury than open murder on the highroad committed by some poor devil, who is

guillotined in consequence. To the upper classes of society these passages in life, these diplomatic meetings

and discussions are like the necessary cesspools where the filth of life is thrown. Full of pity for his client,

At this moment, Paul, Solonet and Madame Evangelista, becoming embarrassed by the old man's silence, felt

that the approval of that censor was necessary to carry out the transaction, and all three turned to him

"This is what I think," said the conscientious and uncompromising notary. "You are not rich enough to

commit such regal folly. The estate of Lanstrac, if estimated at three per cent on its rentals, represents, with

its furniture, one million.; the farms of Grassol and Guadet and your vineyard of BelleRose are worth

another million; your two houses in Bordeaux and Paris, with their furniture, a third million. Against those

three millions, yielding fortyseven thousand francs a year, Mademoiselle Natalie brings eight hundred

thousand francs in the Fivepercents, the diamonds (supposing them to be worth a hundred thousand francs,

which is still problematical) and fifty thousand francs in money; in all, one million and fifty thousand francs.

In presence of such facts my brother notary tells you boastfully that we are marrying equal fortunes! He

expects us to encumber ourselves with a debt of eleven hundred and fiftysix thousand francs to our children

by acknowledging the receipt of our wife's patrimony, when we have actually received but little more than a

doubtful million. You are listening to such stuff with the rapture of a lover, and you think that old Mathias,

who is not in love, can forget arithmetic, and will not point out the difference between landed estate, the

actual value of which is enormous and constantly increasing, and the revenues of personal property, the

capital of which is subject to fluctuations and diminishment of income. I am old enough to have learned that

money dwindles and land augments. You have called me in, Monsieur le comte, to stipulate for your

"If monsieur is seeking a fortune equal in capital to his own," said Solonet, "we certainly cannot give it to

him. We do not possess three millions and a half; nothing can be more evident. While you can boast of your

three overwhelming millions, we can only produce our poor one million,a mere nothing in your eyes,

though three times the dowry of an archduchess of Austria. Bonaparte received only two hundred and fifty

"If my sacrifices are worth nothing," she cried, "I do not choose to continue such a discussion; I trust to the

discretion of Monsieur le comte, and I renounce the honor of his hand for my daughter."

According to the strategy marked out by the younger notary, this battle of contending interests had now

reached the point where victory was certain for Madame Evangelista. The motherinlaw had opened her

heart, delivered up her property, and was therefore practically released as her daughter's guardian. The future

husband, under pain of ignoring the laws of generous propriety and being false to love, ought now to accept

these conditions previously planned, and cleverly led up to by Solonet and Madame Evangelista. Like the

"Madame!" he exclaimed, "is it possible you can think of breaking off the marriage?"

"Monsieur," she replied, "to whom am I accountable? To my daughter. When she is twentyone years of age

she will receive my guardianship account and release me. She will then possess a million, and can, if she

likes, choose her husband among the sons of the peers of France. She is a daughter of the CasaReale."

"Madame is right," remarked Solonet. "Why should she be more hardly pushed today than she will be

fourteen months hence? You ought not to deprive her of the benefits of her maternity."

"Mathias," cried Paul, in deep distress, "there are two sorts of ruin, and you are bringing one upon me at this

He made a step towards the old notary, no doubt intending to tell him that the contract must be drawn at once.

But Mathias stopped that disaster with a glance which said, distinctly, "Wait!" He saw the tears in Paul's

eyes,tears drawn from an honorable man by the shame of this discussion as much as by the peremptory

speech of Madame Evangelista, threatening rupture,and the old man stanched them with a gesture like that

of Archimedes when he cried, "Eureka!" The words "peer of France" had been to him like a torch in a dark

Natalie appeared at this moment, dazzling as the dawn, saying, with infantine look and manner, "Am I in the

"Come in, dear Natalie," said Paul, taking her hand and leading her to a chair near the fireplace. "All is

Like a general who, in a moment, upsets the plans skilfully laid and prepared by the enemy, the old notary,

enlightened by that genius which presides over notaries, saw an idea, capable of saving the future of Paul and

Maitre Solonet, who perceived no other way out of these irreconcilable difficulties than the resolution with

which Paul's love inspired him, and to which this conflict of feelings and thwarted interests had brought him,

was extremely surprised at the sudden exclamation of his brother notary. Curious to know the remedy that

Mathias had found in a state of things which had seemed to him beyond all other relief, he said, addressing

"Mademoiselle is not in the way," replied Mathias, smiling. "I am going to speak in her interests as well as in

Silence reigned for a moment, during which time everybody present, oppressed with anxiety, awaited the

"In these days," continued Maitre Mathias, after a pause, "the profession of notary has changed from what it

was. Political revolutions now exert an influence over the prospects of families, which never happened in

former times. In those days existences were clearly defined; so were rank and position"

"We are not here for a lecture on political ceremony, but to draw up a marriage contract," said Solonet,

Solonet turned away and sat down on the ottoman, saying, in a low voice, to Madame Evangelista:

"Notaries are therefore compelled to follow the course of political events, which are now intimately

connected with private interests. Here is an example: formerly noble families owned fortunes that were never

shaken, but which the laws, promulgated by the Revolution, destroyed, and the present system tends to

reconstruct," resumed the old notary, yielding to the loquacity of the "tabellionaris boa constrictor"

(boanotary). "Monsieur le comte by his name, his talents, and his fortune is called upon to sit some day in

the elective Chamber. Perhaps his destiny will take him to the hereditary Chamber, for we know that he has

talent and means enough to fulfil that expectation. Do you not agree with me, madame?" he added, turning to

"You anticipate my dearest hope," she replied. "Monsieur de Manerville must be a peer of France, or I shall

"Therefore all that leads to that end" continued Mathias with a cordial gesture to the astute motherinlaw.

"Well, then," said Mathias, "is not this marriage the proper occasion on which to entail the estate and create

the family? Such a course would, undoubtedly, militate in the mind of the present government in favor of the

nomination of my client whenever a batch of appointments is sent in. Monsieur le comte can very well afford

to devote the estate of Lanstrac (which is worth a million) to this purpose. I do not ask that mademoiselle

should contribute an equal sum; that would not be just. But we can surely apply eight hundred thousand of

her patrimony to this object. There are two domains adjoining Lanstrac now to be sold, which can be

purchased for that sum, which will return in rentals four and a half per cent. The house in Paris should be

included in the entail. The surplus of the two fortunes, if judiciously managed, will amply suffice for the

fortunes of the younger children. If the contracting parties will agree to this arrangement, Monsieur ought

certainly to accept your guardianship account with its deficiency. I consent to that."

"Questa coda non e di questo gatto (That tail doesn't belong to that cat)," murmured Madame Evangelista,

"There's a snake in the grass somewhere," answered Solonet, in a low voice, replying to the Italian proverb

"Why do you make this fuss?" asked Paul, leading Mathias into the adjoining salon.

"To save you from being ruined," replied the old notary, in a whisper. "You are determined to marry a girl

and her mother who have already squandered two millions in seven years; you are pledging yourself to a debt

of eleven hundred thousand francs to your children, to whom you will have to account for the fortune you are

acknowledging to have received with their mother. You risk having your own fortune squandered in five

years, and to be left as naked as SaintJohn himself, besides being a debtor to your wife and children for

enormous sums. If you are determined to put your life in that boat, Monsieur le comte, of course you can do

as you choose; but at least let me, your old friend, try to save the house of Manerville."

"A lover is about as discreet as a cannonball; therefore, I shall not explain. If you repeated what I should

say, your marriage would probably be broken off. I protect your love by my silence. Have you confidence in

"Well, then, believe me when I tell you that Madame Evangelista, her notary, and her daughter, are tricking

"I sha'n't put my fingers between the bark and the tree," said the old man. "You want her, take her! But I wish

you were well out of this marriage, if it could be done without the least wrongdoing on your part."

"Because that girl will spend the mines of Peru. Besides, see how she rides a horse,like the groom of a

"Hold firm to my conditions. They will consent, for no one's apparent interest is injured. Madame Evangelista

is very anxious to marry her daughter; I see that in her little gameBeware of her!"

Paul returned to the salon, where he found his future motherinlaw conversing in a low tone with Solonet.

Natalie, kept outside of these mysterious conferences, was playing with a screen. Embarrassed by her

position, she was thinking to herself: "How odd it is that they tell me nothing of my own affairs."

The younger notary had seized, in the main, the future effect of the new proposal, based, as it was, on the

selflove of both parties, into which his client had fallen headlong. Now, while Mathias was more than a

mere notary, Solonet was still a young man, and brought into his business the vanity of youth. It often

happens that personal conceit makes a man forgetful of the interests of his client. In this case, Maitre Solonet,

who would not suffer the widow to think that Nestor had vanquished Achilles, advised her to conclude the

marriage on the terms proposed. Little he cared for the future working of the marriage contract; to him, the

conditions of victory were: Madame Evangelista released from her obligations as guardian, her future

"Bordeaux shall know that you have ceded eleven hundred thousand francs to your daughter, and that you

still have twentyfive thousand francs a year left," whispered Solonet to his client. "For my part, I did not

"But," she said, "explain to me why the creation of this entail should have calmed the storm at once."

"It relieves their distrust of you and your daughter. An entail is unchangeable; neither husband nor wife can

"No; we call it simply precaution. The old fellow has caught you in a net. If you refuse to consent to the

entail, he can reply: 'Then your object is to squander the fortune of my client, who, by the creation of this

entail, is protected from all such injury as securely as if the marriage took place under the "regime dotal."'"

Solonet quieted his own scruples by reflecting: "After all, these stipulations will take effect only in the future,

Madame Evangelista contented herself, for the present, with these explanations, having full confidence in

Solonet. She was wholly ignorant of law; considering her daughter as good as married, she thought she had

gained her end, and was filled with the joy of success. Thus, as Mathias had shrewdly calculated, neither

Solonet nor Madame Evangelista understood as yet, to its full extent, this scheme which he had based on

"Madame, if you and Monsieur le comte consent to this arrangement you ought to exchange pledges. It is

fully understood, I suppose," he continued, looking from one to the other, "that the marriage will only take

place on condition of creating an entail upon the estate of Lanstrac and the house in the rue de la Pepiniere,

together with eight hundred thousand francs in money brought by the future wife, the said sum to be invested

in landed property? Pardon me the repetition, madame; but a positive and solemn engagement becomes

absolutely necessary. The creation of an entail requires formalities, application to the chancellor, a royal

ordinance, and we ought at once to conclude the purchase of the new estate in order that the property be

included in the royal ordinance by virtue of which it becomes inalienable. In many families this would be

reduced to writing, but on this occasion I think a simple consent would suffice. Do you consent?"

It was then agreed that Maitre Mathias should draw up the contract, Maitre Solonet the guardianship account

and release, and that both documents should be signed, as the law requires some days before the celebration

"It rains, Mathias; shall I take you home?" said Solonet. "My cabriolet is here."

"My carriage is here too," said Paul, manifesting an intention to accompany the old man.

"I won't rob you of a moment's pleasure," said Mathias. "I accept my friend Solonet's offer."

"Well," said Achilles to Nestor, as the cabriolet rolled away, "you have been truly patriarchal tonight. The

"I felt anxious about their future," replied Mathias, keeping silent as to the real motives of his proposition.

At this moment the two notaries were like a pair of actors arm in arm behind the stage on which they have

"But," said Solonet, thinking of his rights as notary, "isn't it my place to buy that land you mentioned? The

"How can you put property bought in the name of Mademoiselle Evangelista into the creation of an entail by

"But I am the notary of the seller as well as of the buyer of that land," said Mathias. "Besides, Monsieur de

Manerville can buy in his own name. At the time of payment we can make mention of the fact that the dowry

"You've an answer for everything, old man," said Solonet, laughing. "You were really surpassing tonight;

"For an old fellow who didn't expect your batteries of grapeshot, I did pretty well, didn't I?"

The odious struggle in which the material welfare of a family had been so perilously near destruction was to

"I haven't been forty years in harness for nothing," remarked Mathias. "Look here, Solonet," he added, "I'm a

While the two notaries were peacefully returning homeward, with no other sensations than a little throaty

warmth, Paul and Madame Evangelista were left a prey to the nervous trepidation, the quivering of the flesh

and brain which excitable natures pass through after a scene in which their interests and their feelings have

been violently shaken. In Madame Evangelista these last mutterings of the storm were overshadowed by a

"Has Maitre Mathias destroyed in a few minutes the work I have been doing for six months?" she asked

herself. "Was he withdrawing Paul from my influence by filling his mind with suspicion during their secret

She was standing absorbed in these thoughts before the fireplace, her elbow resting on the marble

mantelshelf. When the portecochere closed behind the carriage of the two notaries, she turned to her future

"This has been the most terrible day of my life," cried Paul, overjoyed to see all difficulties vanish. "I know

no one so downright in speech as that old Mathias. May God hear him, and make me peer of France! Dear

Natalie, I desire this for your sake more than for my own. You are my ambition; I live only in you."

Hearing this speech uttered in the accents of the heart, and noting, more especially, the limpid azure of Paul's

eyes, whose glance betrayed no thought of double meaning, Madame Evangelista's satisfaction was complete.

She regretted the sharp language with which she had spurred him, and in the joy of success she resolved to

reassure him as to the future. Calming her countenance, and giving to her eyes that expression of tender

"I can say as much to you. Perhaps, dear Paul, my Spanish nature has led me farther than my heart desired.

Be what you are,kind as God himself,and do not be angry with me for a few hasty words. Shake hands."

Paul was abashed; he fancied himself to blame, and he kissed Madame Evangelista.

"Dear Paul," she said with much emotion, "why could not those two sharks have settled this matter without

"In that case I should not have known how grand and generous you can be," replied Paul.

"We have still a few little matters to settle, my dear son," said Madame Evangelista. "My daughter and I are

above the foolish vanities to which so many persons cling. Natalie does not need my diamonds, but I am glad

"I will not allow it; I will not marry at all," cried Natalie, vehemently. "Keep those jewels which my father

"Hush, my dear," said her mother, whose eyes now filled with tears. "My ignorance of business compels me

"What money can you possibly owe to me?" she said; "to me, who owe you life! If my marriage costs you the

"Dear Natalie, try to understand that neither I, nor your mother, nor you yourself, require these sacrifices, but

"Come, come, my silly child; do you imagine that a contract is like a house of cards which you can blow

down at will? Dear little ignoramus, you don't know what trouble we have had to found an entail for the

benefit of your eldest son. Don't cast us back into the discussions from which we have just escaped."

"Don't quarrel, my children, you are not yet married," said Madame Evangelista. "Paul," she continued, "you

are not to give either corbeille, or jewels, or trousseau. Natalie has everything in profusion. Lay by the money

you would otherwise put into wedding presents. I know nothing more stupidly bourgeois and commonplace

than to spend a hundred thousand francs on a corbeille, when five thousand a year given to a young woman

saves her much anxiety and lasts her lifetime. Besides, the money for a corbeille is needed to decorate your

house in Paris. We will return to Lanstrac in the spring; for Solonet is to settle my debts during the winter."

"So I shall see Paris!" cried Natalie, in a tone that would justly have alarmed de Marsay.

"If we decide upon this plan," said Paul, "I'll write to de Marsay and get him to take a box for me at the

"You are very kind; I should never have dared to ask for it," said Natalie. "Marriage is a very agreeable

institution if it gives husbands a talent for divining the wishes of their wives."

"Why leave so soon tonight?" said Madame Evangelista, employing those coaxing ways to which men are

Though all this passed on the best of terms, and according to the laws of the most exquisite politeness, the

effect of the discussion of these contending interests had, nevertheless, cast between son and motherinlaw

a seed of distrust and enmity which was liable to sprout under the first heat of anger, or the warmth of a

feeling too harshly bruised. In most families the settlement of "dots" and the deeds of gift required by a

marriage contract give rise to primitive emotions of hostility, caused by selflove, by the lesion of certain

sentiments, by regret for the sacrifices made, and by the desire to diminish them. When difficulties arise there

is always a victorious side and a vanquished one. The parents of the future pair try to conclude the matter,

which is purely commercial in their eyes, to their own advantage; and this leads to the trickery, shrewdness,

and deception of such negotiations. Generally the husband alone is initiated into the secret of these

discussions, and the wife is kept, like Natalie, in ignorance of the stipulations which make her rich or poor.

As he left the house, Paul reflected that, thanks to the cleverness of his notary, his fortune was almost entirely

secured from injury. If Madame Evangelista did not live apart from her daughter their united household

would have an income of more than a hundred thousand francs to spend. All his expectations of a happy and

"My motherinlaw seems to me an excellent woman," he thought, still under the influence of the cajoling

manner by which she had endeavored to disperse the clouds raised by the discussion. "Mathias is mistaken.

These notaries are strange fellows; they envenom everything. The harm started from that little cocksparrow

While Paul went to bed recapitulating the advantages he had won during the evening, Madame Evangelista

"Well, darling mother, are you satisfied?" said Natalie, following Madame Evangelista into her bedroom.

"Yes, love," replied the mother, "everything went well, according to my wishes; I feel a weight lifted from

my shoulders which was crushing me. Paul is a most easygoing man. Dear fellow! yes, certainly, we must

make his life prosperous. You will make him happy, and I will be responsible for his political success. The

Spanish ambassador used to be a friend of mine, and I'll renew the relationas I will with the rest of my old

acquaintance. Oh! you'll see! we shall soon be in the very heart of Parisian life; all will be enjoyment for us.

You shall have the pleasures, my dearest, and I the last occupation of existence,the game of ambition!

Don't be alarmed when you see me selling this house. Do you suppose we shall ever come back to live in

Bordeaux? no. Lanstrac? yes. But we shall spend all our winters in Paris, where our real interests lie. Well,

"Solonet advises me to put the proceeds of this house into an annuity," said Madame Evangelista, "but I shall

"By an offer of my diamonds," replied Madame Evangelista. "Solonet was right. How ably he conducted the

whole affair. Get out my jewelcase, Natalie. I have never seriously considered what my diamonds are worth.

When I said a hundred thousand francs I talked nonsense. Madame de Gyas always declared that the necklace

and earrings your father gave me on our marriage day were worth at least that sum. My poor husband was

so lavish! Then my family diamond, the one Philip the Second gave to the Duke of Alba, and which my aunt

bequeathed to me, the 'Discreto,' was, I think, appraised in former times at four thousand quadruples,one of

Natalie laid out upon her mother's toilettable the pearl necklace, the sets of jewels, the gold bracelets and

precious stones of all description, with that inexpressible sensation enjoyed by certain women at the sight of

such treasures, by whichso commentators on the Talmud saythe fallen angels seduce the daughters of

"Certainly," said Madame Evangelista, "though I know nothing about jewels except how to accept and wear

them, I think there must be a great deal of money in these. Then, if we make but one household, I can sell my

plate, the weight of which, as mere silver, would bring thirty thousand francs. I remember when we brought it

from Lima, the customhouse officers weighed and appraised it. Solonet is right, I'll send tomorrow to Elie

Magus. The Jew shall estimate the value of these things. Perhaps I can avoid sinking any of my fortune in an

"He ought to give it to you, if he loves you," replied her mother; "and I think he might have all my other

jewels reset and let you keep them. The diamonds are a part of your property in the contract. And now,

The woman of luxury, the Creole, the great lady, incapable of analyzing the results of a contract which was

not yet in force, went to sleep in the joy of seeing her daughter married to a man who was easy to manage,

who would let them both be mistresses of his home, and whose fortune, united to theirs, would require no

change in their way of living. Thus having settled her account with her daughter, whose patrimony was

"How foolish of me to worry as I did," she thought. "But I wish the marriage were well over."

So Madame Evangelista, Paul, Natalie, and the two notaries were equally satisfied with the first day's result.

The Te Deum was sung in both camps,a dangerous situation; for there comes a moment when the

vanquished side is aware of its mistake. To Madame Evangelista's mind, her soninlaw was the vanquished

The next day Elie Magus (who happened at that time to be in Bordeaux) obeyed Madame Evangelista's

summons, believing, from general rumor as to the marriage of Comte Paul with Mademoiselle Natalie, that it

concerned a purchase of jewels for the bride. The Jew was, therefore, astonished when he learned that, on the

contrary, he was sent for to estimate the value of the motherinlaw's property. The instinct of his race, as

well as certain insidious questions, made him aware that the value of the diamonds was included in the

marriagecontract. The stones were not to be sold, and yet he was to estimate them as if some private person

were buying them from a dealer. Jewellers alone know how to distinguish between the diamonds of Asia and

those of Brazil. The stones of Golconda and Visapur are known by a whiteness and glittering brilliancy which

others have not,the water of the Brazilian diamonds having a yellow tinge which reduces their selling

value. Madame Evangelista's necklace and earrings, being composed entirely of Asiatic diamonds, were

valued by Elie Magus at two hundred and fifty thousand francs. As for the "Discreto," he pronounced it one

of the finest diamonds in the possession of private persons; it was known to the trade and valued at one

hundred thousand francs. On hearing this estimate, which proved to her the lavishness of her husband,

Madame Evangelista asked the old Jew whether she should be able to obtain that money immediately.

"Madame," replied the Jew, "if you wish to sell I can give you only seventyfive thousand for the brilliant,

"Madame," replied Magus, "the finer the diamond, the longer we keep it unsold. The rarity of such

investments is one reason for the high value set upon precious stones. As the merchant cannot lose the

interest of his money, this additional sum, joined to the rise and fall to which such merchandise is subject,

explains the difference between the price of purchase and the price of sale. By owning these diamonds you

have lost the interest on three hundred thousand francs for twenty years. If you wear your jewels ten times a

year, it costs you three thousand francs each evening to put them on. How many beautiful gowns you could

buy with that sum. Those who own diamonds are, therefore, very foolish; but, luckily for us, women are

The Jew examined the gold of the settings, held the pearls to the light, scrutinized the rubies, the diadems,

"A good many Portuguese diamonds from Brazil are among them. They are not worth more than a hundred

thousand to me. But," he added, "a dealer would sell them to a customer for one hundred and fifty thousand,

"You are wrong," replied Elie Magus. "With the income from the sum they represent you could buy just as

This singular conference became known, and corroborated certain rumors excited by the discussion of the

contract. The servants of the house, overhearing high voices, supposed the difficulties greater than they really

were. Their gossip with other valets spread the information, which from the lower regions rose to the ears of

the masters. The attention of society, and of the town in general, became so fixed on the marriage of two

persons equally rich and wellborn, that every one, great and small, busied themselves about the matter, and

"Madame Evangelista sells her house; she must be ruined. She offered her diamonds to Elie Magus. Nothing

is really settled between herself and the Comte de Manerville. Is it probable that the marriage will ever take

To this question some answered yes, and others said no. The two notaries, when questioned, denied these

calumnies, and declared that the difficulties arose only from the official delay in constituting the entail. But

when public opinion has taken a trend in one direction it is very difficult to turn it back. Though Paul went

every day to Madame Evangelista's house, and though the notaries denied these assertions continually, the

whispered calumny went on. Young girls, and their mothers and aunts, vexed at a marriage they had dreamed

of for themselves or for their families, could not forgive the Spanish ladies for their happiness, as authors

cannot forgive each other for their success. A few persons revenged themselves for the twentyyears luxury

and grandeur of the family of Evangelista, which had lain heavily on their selflove. A leading personage at

the prefecture declared that the notaries could have chosen no other language and followed no other conduct

in the case of a rupture. The time actually required for the establishment of the entail confirmed the

"They will keep the ball going through the winter; then, in the spring, they will go to some wateringplace,

"And, of course, we shall be given to understand," said others, "for the sake of the honor of the two families,

that the difficulties did not come from either side, but the chancellor refused to consent; you may be sure it

"Madame Evangelista," some said, "lived in a style that the mines of Valencia couldn't meet. When the time

came to melt the bell, and pay the daughter's patrimony, nothing would be found to pay it with."

The occasion was excellent to add up the spendings of the handsome widow and prove, categorically, her

ruin. Rumors were so rife that bets were made for and against the marriage. By the laws of worldly

jurisprudence this gossip was not allowed to reach the ears of the parties concerned. No one was enemy or

friend enough to Paul or to Madame Evangelista to inform either of what was being said. Paul had some

business at Lanstrac, and used the occasion to make a hunting party for several of the young men of

Bordeaux,a sort of farewell, as it were, to his bachelor life. This hunting party was accepted by society as a

When this event occurred, Madame de Gyas, who had a daughter to marry, thought it high time to sound the

matter, and to condole, with joyful heart, the blow received by the Evangelistas. Natalie and her mother were

somewhat surprised to see the lengthened face of the marquise, and they asked at once if anything distressing

"Can it be," she replied, "that you are ignorant of the rumors that are circulating? Though I think them false

myself, I have come to learn the truth in order to stop this gossip, at any rate among the circle of my own

friends. To be the dupes or the accomplices of such an error is too false a position for true friends to occupy."

Madame de Gyas thereupon allowed herself the happiness of repeating all the current gossip, not sparing her

two friends a single stab. Natalie and Madame Evangelista looked at each other and laughed, but they fully

understood the meaning of the tale and the motives of their friend. The Spanish lady took her revenge very

"My dear, are you ignorantyou who know the provinces so wellcan you be ignorant of what a mother is

capable when she has on her hands a daughter whom she cannot marry for want of 'dot' and lovers, want of

beauty, want of mind, and, sometimes, want of everything? Why, a mother in that position would rob a

diligence or commit a murder, or wait for a man at the corner of a streetshe would sacrifice herself twenty

times over, if she was a mother at all. Now, as you and I both know, there are many such in that situation in

Bordeaux, and no doubt they attribute to us their own thoughts and actions. Naturalists have depicted the

habits and customs of many ferocious animals, but they have forgotten the mother and daughter in quest of a

husband. Such women are hyenas, going about, as the Psalmist says, seeking whom they may devour, and

adding to the instinct of the brute the intellect of man, and the genius of woman. I can understand that those

little spiders, Mademoiselle de Belor, Mademoiselle de Trans, and others, after working so long at their webs

without catching a fly, without so much as hearing a buzz, should be furious; I can even forgive their spiteful

speeches. But that you, who can marry your daughter when you please, you, who are rich and titled, you who

have nothing of the provincial about you, whose daughter is clever and possesses fine qualities, with beauty

and the power to choosethat you, so distinguished from the rest by your Parisian grace, should have paid

the least heed to this talk does really surprise me. Am I bound to account to the public for the marriage

stipulations which our notaries think necessary under the political circumstances of my soninlaw's future

life? Has the mania for public discussion made its way into families? Ought I to convoke in writing the

fathers and mothers of the province to come here and give their vote on the clauses of our marriage contract?"

A torrent of epigram flowed over Bordeaux. Madame Evangelista was about to leave the city, and could

safely scan her friends and enemies, caricature them and lash them as she pleased, with nothing to fear in

return. Accordingly, she now gave vent to her secret observations and her latent dislikes as she sought for the

"But, my dear," said the Marquise de Gyas, "this stay of the count at Lanstrac, these parties given to young

"Ah! my dear," said the great lady, interrupting the marquise, "do you suppose that we adopt the pettiness of

bourgeois customs? Is Count Paul held in bonds like a man who might seek to get away? Think you we ought

to watch him with a squad of gendarmes lest some provincial conspiracy should get him away from us?"

Here her words were interrupted by a footman who entered the room to announce Paul. Like many lovers,

Paul thought it charming to ride twelve miles to spend an hour with Natalie. He had left his friends while

"Dear Paul," said Natalie, "you don't know what an answer you are giving to madame."

When Paul heard of the gossip that was current in Bordeaux, he laughed instead of being angry.

"These worthy people have found out, perhaps, that there will be no wedding festivities, according to

provincial usages, no marriage at midday in the church, and they are furious. Well, my dear mother," he

added, kissing her hand, "let us pacify them with a ball on the day when we sign the contract, just as the

government flings a fete to the people in the great square of the ChampsElysees, and we will give our dear

friends the dolorous pleasure of signing a marriagecontract such as they have seldom heard of in the

This little incident proved of great importance. Madame Evangelista invited all Bordeaux to witness the

signature of the contract, and showed her intention of displaying in this last fete a luxury which should refute

The preparations for this event required over a month, and it was called the fete of the camellias. Immense

quantities of that beautiful flower were massed on the staircase, and in the antechamber and supperroom.

During this month the formalities for constituting the entail were concluded in Paris; the estates adjoining

Lanstrac were purchased, the banns were published, and all doubts finally dissipated. Friends and enemies

The time occupied by these events obscured the difficulties raised by the first discussion, and swept into

oblivion the words and arguments of that stormy conference. Neither Paul nor his motherinlaw continued

to think of them. Were they not, after all, as Madame Evangelista had said, the affair of the two notaries?

Butto whom has it never happened, when life is in its fullest flow, to be suddenly changed by the voice of

memory, raised, perhaps, too late, reminding us of some important new fact, some threatened danger? On the

morning of the day when the contract was to be signed and the fete given, one of these flashes of the soul

illuminated the mind of Madame Evangelista during the semisomnolence of her waking hour. The words

that she herself had uttered at the moment when Mathias acceded to Solonet's conditions, "Questa coda non e

di questo gatto," were cried aloud in her mind by that voice of memory. In spite of her incapacity for

"If so clever a notary as Mathias was pacified, it must have been that he saw compensation at the cost of

That some one could not be Paul, as she had blindly hoped. Could it be that her daughter's fortune was to pay

the costs of war? She resolved to demand explanations on the tenor of the contract, not reflecting on the

course she would have to take in case she found her interests seriously compromised. This day had so

powerful an influence on Paul de Manerville's conjugal life that it is necessary to explain certain of the

Madame Evangelista had shrunk from no expense for this dazzling fete. The courtyard was gravelled and

converted into a tent, and filled with shrubs, although it was winter. The camellias, of which so much had

been said from Angouleme to Dax, were banked on the staircase and in the vestibules. Wall partitions had

disappeared to enlarge the supperroom and the ballroom where the dancing was to be. Bordeaux, a city

famous for the luxury of colonial fortunes, was on a tiptoe of expectation for this scene of fairyland. About

eight o'clock, as the last discussion of the contract was taking place within the house, the inquisitive

populace, anxious to see the ladies in full dress getting out of their carriages, formed in two hedges on either

side of the portecochere. Thus the sumptuous atmosphere of a fete acted upon all minds at the moment

when the contract was being signed, illuminating colored lamps lighted up the shrubs, and the wheels of the

arriving guests echoed from the courtyard. The two notaries had dined with the bridal pair and their mother.

Mathias's headclerk, whose business it was to receive the signatures of the guests during the evening (taking

due care that the contract was not surreptitiously read by the signers), was also present at the dinner.

No bridal toilet was ever comparable with that of Natalie, whose beauty, decked with laces and satin, her hair

coquettishly falling in a myriad of curls about her throat, resembled that of a flower encased in its foliage.

Madame Evangelista, robed in a gown of cherry velvet, a color judiciously chosen to heighten the brilliancy

of her skin and her black hair and eyes, glowed with the beauty of a woman at forty, and wore her pearl

necklace, clasped with the "Discreto," a visible contradiction to the late calumnies.

To fully explain this scene, it is necessary to say that Paul and Natalie sat together on a sofa beside the

fireplace and paid no attention to the reading of the documents. Equally childish and equally happy, regarding

life as a cloudless sky, rich, young, and loving, they chattered to each other in a low voice, sinking into

whispers. Arming his love with the presence of legality, Paul took delight in kissing the tips of Natalie's

fingers, in lightly touching her snowy shoulders and the waving curls of her hair, hiding from the eyes of

others these joys of illegal emancipation. Natalie played with a screen of peacock's feathers given to her by

Paul,a gift which is to love, according to superstitious belief in certain countries, as dangerous an omen as

the gift of scissors or other cutting instruments, which recall, no doubt, the Parces of antiquity.

Seated beside the two notaries, Madame Evangelista gave her closest attention to the reading of the

documents. After listening to the guardianship account, most ably written out by Solonet, in which Natalie's

share of the three million and more francs left by Monsieur Evangelista was shown to be the muchdebated

eleven hundred and fifty six thousand, Madame Evangelista said to the heedless young couple:

The clerk drank a glass of icedwater, Solonet and Mathias blew their noses, Paul and Natalie looked at the

four personages before them, listened to the preamble, and returned to their chatter. The statement of the

property brought by each party; the general deed of gift in the event of death without issue; the deed of gift of

onefourth in life interest and onefourth in capital without interest, allowed by the Code, whatever be the

number of the children; the constitution of a common fund for husband and wife; the settlement of the

diamonds on the wife, the library and horses on the husband, were duly read and passed without observations.

Then followed the constitution of the entail. When all was read and nothing remained but to sign the contract,

Madame Evangelista demanded to know what would be the ultimate effect of the entail.

"An entail, madam," replied Solonet, "means an inalienable right to the inheritance of certain property

belonging to both husband and wife, which is settled from generation to generation on the eldest son of the

house, without, however, depriving him of his right to share in the division of the rest of the property."

"Madame, an entail being an appanage, or portion of property set aside for this purpose from the fortunes of

husband and wife, it follows that if the wife dies first, leaving several children, one of them a son, Monsieur

de Manerville will owe those children three hundred and sixty thousand francs only, from which he will

deduct his fourth in lifeinterest and his fourth in capital. Thus his debt to those children will be reduced to

one hundred and sixty thousand francs, or thereabouts, exclusive of his savings and profits from the common

fund constituted for husband and wife. If, on the contrary, he dies first, leaving a male heir, Madame de

Manerville has a right to three hundred and sixty thousand francs only, and to her deeds of gift of such of her

husband's property as is not included in the entail, to the diamonds now settled upon her, and to her profits

The effect of Maitre Mathias's astute and farsighted policy were now plainly seen.

"Is it ruin," replied Mathias, speaking gently, "to constitute for her family an indestructible fortune?"

The younger notary, seeing the expression of his client's face, thought it judicious in him to state the disaster

"We tried to trick them out of three hundred thousand francs," he whispered to the angry woman. "They have

actually laid hold of eight hundred thousand; it is a loss of four hundred thousand from our interests for the

benefit of the children. You must now either break the marriage off at once, or carry it through," concluded

It is impossible to describe the moment of silence that followed. Maitre Mathias waited in triumph the

signature of the two persons who had expected to rob his client. Natalie, not competent to understand that she

had lost half her fortune, and Paul, ignorant that the house of Manerville had gained it, were laughing and

chattering still. Solonet and Madame Evangelista gazed at each other; the one endeavoring to conceal his

After suffering in her own mind the struggles of remorse, after blaming Paul as the cause of her dishonesty,

Madame Evangelista had decided to employ those shameful manoeuvres to cast on him the burden of her

own unfaithful guardianship, considering him her victim. But now, in a moment, she perceived that where

she thought she triumphed she was about to perish, and her victim was her own daughter. Guilty without

profit, she saw herself the dupe of an honorable old man, whose respect she had doubtless lost. Her secret

conduct must have inspired the stipulation of old Mathias; and Mathias must have enlightened Paul. Horrible

reflection! Even if he had not yet done so, as soon as that contract was signed the old wolf would surely warn

his client of the dangers he had run and had now escaped, were it only to receive the praise of his sagacity.

He would put him on his guard against the wily woman who had lowered herself to this conspiracy; he would

destroy the empire she had conquered over her soninlaw! Feeble natures, once warned, turn obstinate, and

are never won again. At the first discussion of the contract she had reckoned on Paul's weakness, and on the

impossibility he would feel of breaking off a marriage so far advanced. But now, she herself was far more

tightly bound. Three months earlier Paul had no real obstacles to prevent the rupture; now, all Bordeaux knew

that the notaries had smoothed the difficulties; the banns were published; the wedding was to take place

immediately; the friends of both families were at that moment arriving for the fete, and to witness the

contract. How could she postpone the marriage at this late hour? The cause of the rupture would surely be

made known; Maitre Mathias's stern honor was too well known in Bordeaux; his word would be believed in

preference to hers. The scoffers would turn against her and against her daughter. No, she could not break it

These reflections, so cruelly sound, fell upon Madame Evangelista's brain like a waterspout and split it.

Though she still maintained the dignity and reserve of a diplomatist, her chin was shaken by that apoplectic

movement which showed the anger of Catherine the Second on the famous day when, seated on her throne

and in presence of her court (very much in the present circumstances of Madame Evangelista), she was

braved by the King of Sweden. Solonet observed that play of the muscles, which revealed the birth of a

mortal hatred, a lurid storm to which there was no lightning. At this moment Madame Evangelista vowed to

her soninlaw one of those unquenchable hatreds the seeds of which were left by the Moors in the

"Monsieur," she said, bending to the ear of her notary, "you called that stipulation balderdash; it seems to me

"Monsieur," she continued, paying no heed to his interruption, "if you did not perceive the effect of that entail

at the time of our first conference, it is very extraordinary that it did not occur to you in the silence of your

The young notary drew his client into the next room, saying to himself, as he did so:

"I get a threethousand franc fee for the guardianship account, three thousand for the contract, six thousand

He closed the door, cast on Madame Evangelista the cool look of a business man, and said:

"Madame, having, for your sake, passedas I didthe proper limits of legal craft, do you seriously intend

"Madame, I did not, it is true, calculate the effect of the deeds of gift. But if you do not wish Comte Paul for

your soninlaw you are not obliged to accept him. The contract is not signed. Give your fete, and postpone

"How can I justify such a course to society, which is already prejudiced against us by the slow conclusion of

"By some error committed in Paris; some missing document not sent with the rest," replied Solonet.

"Monsieur de Manerville will be at no loss to find another bride and another dowry."

"You?" replied Solonet; "why, you can easily find another count who will cost you less money, if a title is the

"No, no! we can't stake our honor in that way. I am caught in a trap, monsieur. All Bordeaux will ring with

"To be happy in France," said the notary, "means being mistress of the home. She can lead that fool of a

Manerville by the nose if she chooses; he is so dull he has actually seen nothing of all this. Even if he now

distrusts you, he will always trust his wife; and his wife is YOU, is she not? The count's fate is still within

"If that were true, monsieur, I know not what I would not do to show my gratitude," she said, in a transport of

"Let us now return to the others, madame," said Solonet. "Listen carefully to what I shall say; and thenyou

"My dear friend," said the young notary to Maitre Mathias, "in spite of your great ability, you have not

foreseen either the case of Monsieur de Manerville dying without children, nor that in which he leaves only

female issue. In either of those cases the entail would pass to the Manervilles, or, at any rate, give rise to suits

on their part. I think, therefore, it is necessary to stipulate that in the first case the entailed property shall pass

under the general deed of gift between husband and wife; and in the second case that the entail shall be

"Both clauses seem to me perfectly just," said Maitre Mathias. "As to their ratification, Monsieur le comte

Solonet took a pen and added this momentous clause on the margin of the contract. Paul and Natalie paid no

attention to the matter; but Madame Evangelista dropped her eyes while Maitre Mathias read the added

The volume of voice which Madame Evangelista repressed as she uttered those words betrayed her violent

emotion. She was thinking to herself: "No, my daughter shall not be ruinedbut he! My daughter shall have

the name, the title, and the fortune. If she should some day discover that she does not love him, that she loves

another, irresistibly, Paul shall be driven out of France! My daughter shall be free, and happy, and rich."

If Maitre Mathias understood how to analyze business interests, he knew little of the analysis of human

passions. He accepted Madame Evangelista's words as an honorable "amende," instead of judging them for

what they were, a declaration of war. While Solonet and his clerk superintended Natalie as she signed the

documents,an operation which took time,Mathias took Paul aside and told him the meaning of the

"The whole affair is now 'en regle.' I hold the documents. But the contract contains a rescript for the

diamonds; you must ask for them. Business is business. Diamonds are going up just now, but may go down.

The purchase of those new domains justifies you in turning everything into money that you can. Therefore,

Monsieur le comte, have no false modesty in this matter. The first payment is due after the formalities are

over. The sum is two hundred thousand francs; put the diamonds into that. You have the lien on this house,

which will be sold at once, and will pay the rest. If you have the courage to spend only fifty thousand francs

for the next three years, you can save the two hundred thousand francs you are now obliged to pay. If you

plant vineyards on your new estates, you can get an income of over twenty five thousand francs upon them.

Paul pressed the hand of his old friend very affectionately, a gesture which did not escape Madame

Evangelista, who now came forward to offer him the pen. Suspicion became certainty to her mind. She was

confident that Paul and Mathias had come to an understanding about her. Rage and hatred sent the blood

After verifying that all the documents were duly signed and the initials of the parties affixed to the bottom of

the leaves, Maitre Mathias looked from Paul to his motherinlaw, and seeing that his client did not intend to

"I do not suppose there can be any doubt about the transfer of the diamonds, as you are now one family."

"It would be more regular if Madame Evangelista made them over now, as Monsieur de Manerville has

become responsible for the guardianship funds, and we never know who may live or die," said Solonet, who

thought he saw in this circumstance fresh cause of anger in the motherinlaw against the soninlaw.

"Ah! mother," cried Paul, "it would be insulting to us all to do that, 'Summum jus, summum injuria,'

"And I," said Madame Evangelista, led by the hatred now surging in her heart to see a direct insult to her in

the indirect appeal of Maitre Mathias, "I will tear that contract up if you do not take them."

She left the room in one of those furious passions which long for the power to destroy everything, and which

"For Heaven's sake, take them, Paul," whispered Natalie in his ear. "My mother is angry; I shall know why

Calmed by this first outburst, madame kept the necklace and earrings, which she was wearing, and brought

the other jewels, valued at one hundred and fifty thousand francs by Elie Magus. Accustomed to the sight of

family diamonds in all valuations of inheritance, Maitre Mathias and Solonet examined these jewels in their

"You will lose nothing, after all, upon the 'dot,' Monsieur le comte," said Solonet, bringing the color to Paul's

"Yes," said Mathias, "these jewels will meet the first payment on the purchase of the new estate."

Hatred feeds, like love, on little things; the least thing strengthens it; as one beloved can do no evil, so the

person hated can do no good. Madame Evangelista assigned to hypocrisy the natural embarrassment of Paul,

who was unwilling to take the jewels, and not knowing where to put the cases, longed to fling them from the

window. Madame Evangelista spurred him with a glance which seemed to say, "Take your property from

"Dear Natalie," said Paul, "put away these jewels; they are yours; I give them to you."

Natalie locked them into the drawer of a console. At this instant the noise of the carriages in the courtyard

and the murmur of voices in the receptionsrooms became so loud that Natalie and her mother were forced to

"Profit by the honeymoon to sell those diamonds," said the old notary to Paul as he went away.

While waiting for the dancing to begin, whispers went round about the marriage, and doubts were expressed

"Is it finally arranged?" said one of the leading personages of the town to Madame Evangelista.

"We had so many documents to read and sign that I fear we are rather late," she replied; "but perhaps we are

"As for me, I heard nothing," said Natalie, giving her hand to her lover to open the ball.

"Both of those young persons are extravagant, and the mother is not of a kind to check them," said a dowager.

"But they have founded an entail, I am told, worth fifty thousand francs a year."

"In that I see the hand of our worthy Monsieur Mathias," said a magistrate. "If it is really true, he has done it

"Natalie is too handsome not to be horribly coquettish. After a couple of years of marriage," said one young

"But, my dear, I have just been told that all she is able to keep is twentyfive thousand francs a year, and

"Yes, she has robbed herself for Natalie. Monsieur de Manerville has been so exacting"

"Extremely exacting," put in Maitre Solonet. "But before long he will be peer of France. The Maulincours

and the Vidame de Pamiers will use their influence. He belongs to the faubourg SaintGermain."

"Oh! he is received there, and that is all," said a lady, who had tried to obtain him as a soninlaw.

"Mademoiselle Evangelista, as the daughter of a merchant, will certainly not open the doors of the

The topic was presently exhausted. The cardplayers went to the tables, the young people danced, the supper

was served, and the ball was not over till morning, when the first gleams of the coming day whitened the

Having said adieu to Paul, who was the last to go away, Madame Evangelista went to her daughter's room;

for her own had been taken by the architect to enlarge the scene of the fete. Though Natalie and her mother

were overcome with sleep, they said a few words to each other as soon as they were alone.

"My darling, I learned this evening to what lengths a mother's tenderness can go. You know nothing of

business, and you are ignorant of the suspicions to which my integrity has been exposed. I have trampled my

"Are you talking of the diamonds? Poor boy, he wept; he did not want them; I have them."

"Sleep now, my child. We will talk business when we wakefor," she added, sighing, "you and I have

"Ah! my dear mother, Paul will never be an obstacle to our happiness, yours and mine," murmured Natalie,

Madame Evangelista's soul was seized at that moment with the first idea of avarice, a vice to which many

become a prey as they grow aged. It came into her mind to recover in her daughter's interest the whole of the

property left by her husband. She told herself that her honor demanded it. Her devotion to Natalie made her,

in a moment, as shrewd and calculating as she had hitherto been careless and wasteful. She resolved to turn

her capital to account, after investing a part of it in the Funds, which were then selling at eighty francs. A

passion often changes the whole character in a moment; an indiscreet person becomes a diplomatist, a coward

is suddenly brave. Hate made this prodigal woman a miser. Chance and luck might serve the project of

vengeance, still undefined and confused, which she would now mature in her mind. She fell asleep, muttering

to herself, "Tomorrow!" By an unexplained phenomenon, the effects of which are familiar to all thinkers,

her mind, during sleep, marshalled its ideas, enlightened them, classed them, prepared a means by which she

was to rule Paul's life, and showed her a plan which she began to carry out on that very tomorrow.

Though the excitement of the fete had driven from Paul's mind the anxious thoughts that now and then

assailed it, when he was alone with himself and in his bed they returned to torment him.

"It seems to me," he said to himself, "that without that good Mathias my motherinlaw would have tricked

me. And yet, is that believable? What interest could lead her to deceive me? Are we not to join fortunes and

live together? Well, well, why should I worry about it? In two days Natalie will be my wife, our money

relations are plainly defined, nothing can come between us. Vogue la galereNevertheless, I'll be upon my

guard. Suppose Mathias was right? Well, if he was, I'm not obliged to marry my motherinlaw."

In this second battle of the contract Paul's future had completely changed in aspect, though he was not aware

of it. Of the two persons whom he was marrying, one, the cleverest, was now his mortal enemy, and

meditated already withdrawing her interests from the common fund. Incapable of observing the difference

that a Creole nature placed between his motherinlaw and other women, Paul was far from suspecting her

craftiness. The Creole nature is apart from all others; it derives from Europe by its intellect, from the tropics

by the illogical violence of its passions, from the East by the apathetic indifference with which it does, or

suffers, either good or evil, equally,a graceful nature withal, but dangerous, as a child is dangerous if not

watched. Like a child, the Creole woman must have her way immediately; like a child, she would burn a

house to boil an egg. In her soft and easy life she takes no care upon her mind; but when impassioned, she

thinks of all things. She has something of the perfidy of the Negroes by whom she has been surrounded from

her cradle, but she is also as naive and even, at times, as artless as they. Like them and like the children, she

wishes doggedly for one thing with a growing intensity of desire, and will brood upon that idea until she

hatches it. A strange assemblage of virtues and defects! which her Spanish nature had strengthened in

Madame Evangelista, and over which her French experience had cast the glaze of its politeness.

This character, slumbering in married happiness for sixteen years, occupied since then with the trivialities of

social life, this nature to which a first hatred had revealed its strength, awoke now like a conflagration; at the

moment of the woman's life when she was losing the dearest object of her affections and needed another

element for the energy that possessed her, this flame burst forth. Natalie could be but three days more beneath

her influence! Madame Evangelista, vanquished at other points, had one clear day before her, the last of those

that a daughter spends beside her mother. A few words, and the Creole nature could influence the lives of the

two beings about to walk together through the brambled paths and the dusty highroads of Parisian society,

for Natalie believed in her mother blindly. What farreaching power would the counsel of that Creole nature

have on a mind so subservient! The whole future of these lives might be determined by one single speech. No

code, no human institution can prevent the crime that kills by words. There lies the weakness of social law; in

that is the difference between the morals of the great world and the morals of the people: one is frank, the

other hypocritical; one employs the knife, the other the venom of ideas and language; to one death, to the

The next morning, about midday, Madame Evangelista was half seated, half lying on the edge of her

daughter's bed. During that waking hour they caressed and played together in happy memory of their loving

life; a life in which no discord had ever troubled either the harmony of their feelings, the agreement of their

"Poor little darling!" said the mother, shedding true tears, "how can I help being sorrowful when I think that

after I have fulfilled your every wish during your whole life you will belong, tomorrow night, to a man you

"Oh, my dear mother, as for obeying!" and Natalie made a little motion of her head which expressed a

graceful rebellion. "You are joking," she continued. "My father always gratified your caprices; and why not?

"Yes, Paul has a certain love for you. But if a married woman is not careful nothing more rapidly evaporates

than conjugal love. The influence a wife ought to have over her husband depends entirely on how she begins

"Possibly, my child. Last night, while the ball was going on, I reflected on the dangers of our being together.

If my presence were to do you harm, if the little acts by which you ought slowly, but surely, to establish your

authority as a wife should be attributed to my influence, your home would become a hell. At the first frown I

saw upon your husband's brow I, proud as I am, should instantly leave his house. If I were driven to leave it,

better, I think, not to enter it. I should never forgive your husband if he caused trouble between us. Whereas,

when you have once become the mistress, when your husband is to you what your father was to me, that

danger is no longer to be feared. Though this wise policy will cost your young and tender heart a pang, your

"My dear little daughter, in order that a wife may rule, she must always seem to do what her husband wishes.

If you were not told this you might by some impulsive opposition destroy your future. Paul is a weak young

man; he might allow a friend to rule him; he might even fall under the dominion of some woman who would

make you feel her influence. Prevent such disasters by making yourself from the very start his ruler. Is it not

"And it is my privilege, darling, to think only of yours, and to wish not to leave you at so crucial a moment

"But, dearest mother, are we not strong enough, you and I, to stay together beside him, without having to fear

"Oh! oh! He fears me more than he loves me. Observe him carefully today when I tell him that I shall let

you go to Paris without me, and you will see on his face, no matter what pains he takes to conceal it, his

"Why? Dear child! I am like SaintJean Bouched'Or. I will tell that to himself, and before you."

"Our separation is necessary," replied her mother. "Several considerations have greatly changed my future. I

am now poor. You will lead a brilliant life in Paris, and I could not live with you suitably without spending

the little that remains to me. Whereas, if I go to Lanstrac, I can take care of your property there and restore

"You, mamma! YOU practise economy!" cried Natalie, laughing. "Don't begin to be a grandmother yet.

What! do you mean to leave me for such reasons as those? Dear mother, Paul may seem to you a trifle stupid,

"Ah!" replied Madame Evangelista, in a tone of voice big with suggestions which made the girl's heart throb,

"those discussions about the contract have made me distrustful. I have my doubts about himBut don't be

troubled, dear child," she added, taking her daughter by the neck and kissing her. "I will not leave you long

alone. Whenever my return can take place without making difficulty between you, whenever Paul can rightly

judge me, we will begin once more our happy little life, our evening confidences"

"Because, dear angel, I shall live for her. My mother's heart will be satisfied in the thought that I contribute,

"But, my dear, adorable mother, must I be alone with Paul, here, now, all at once? What will become of me?

"Poor child! do you think that I would utterly abandon you to your first battle? We will write to each other

three times a week like lovers. We shall thus be close to each other's hearts incessantly. Nothing can happen

to you that I shall not know, and I can save you from all misfortune. Besides, it would be too ridiculous if I

never went to see you; it would seem to show dislike or disrespect to your husband; I will always spend a

"Alone, already alone, and with him!" cried Natalie in terror, interrupting her mother.

"Yes, I wish it. But tell me how I should behave,you, who did what you pleased with my father. You know

Madame Evangelista kissed her daughter's forehead. She had willed and awaited this request.

"Child, my counsels must adept themselves to circumstances. All men are not alike. The lion and the frog are

not more unlike than one man compared with another,morally, I mean. Do I know today what will

happen to you tomorrow? No; therefore I can only give you general advice upon the whole tenor of your

"In the first place, my dear child, the cause of the failure of married women who desire to keep their

husbands' heartsand," she said, making a parenthesis, "to keep their hearts and rule them is one and the

same thingWell, the principle cause of conjugal disunion is to be found in perpetual intercourse, which

never existed in the olden time, but which has been introduced into this country of late years with the mania

for family. Since the Revolution the manners and customs of the bourgeois have invaded the homes of the

aristocracy. This misfortune is due to one of their writers, Rousseau, an infamous heretic, whose ideas were

all antisocial and who pretended, I don't know how, to justify the most senseless things. He declared that all

women had the same rights and the same faculties; that living in a state of society we ought, nevertheless, to

obey natureas if the wife of a Spanish grandee, as if you or I had anything in common with the women of

the people! Since then, wellbred women have suckled their children, have educated their daughters, and

stayed in their own homes. Life has become so involved that happiness is almost impossible,for a perfect

harmony between natures such as that which has made you and me live as two friends is an exception.

Perpetual contact is as dangerous for parents and children as it is for husband and wife. There are few souls in

which love survives this fatal omnipresence. Therefore, I say, erect between yourself and Paul the barriers of

society; go to balls and operas; go out in the morning, dine out in the evenings, pay visits constantly, and

grant but little of your time to your husband. By this means you will always keep your value to him. When

two beings bound together for life have nothing to live upon but sentiment, its resources are soon exhausted,

indifference, satiety, and disgust succeed. When sentiment has withered what will become of you?

Remember, affection once extinguished can lead to nothing but indifference or contempt. Be ever young and

ever new to him. He may weary you,that often happens,but you must never weary him. The faculty of

being bored without showing it is a condition of all species of power. You cannot diversify happiness by the

cares of property or the occupations of a family. If you do not make your husband share your social interests,

if you do not keep him amused you will fall into a dismal apathy. Then begins the SPLEEN of love. But a

man will always love the woman who amuses him and keeps him happy. To give happiness and to receive it

"If you love Paul to the extent of doing all he asks of you, if you make your happiness depend on him, all is

over with your future life; you will never be mistress of your home, and the best precepts in the world will do

"That is plainer; but I see the rule without knowing how to apply it," said Natalie, laughing. "I have the

"My poor Ninie," replied the mother, who dropped an honest tear at the thought of her daughter's marriage,

"things will happen to teach it to youAnd," she continued, after a pause, during which the mother and

daughter held each other closely embraced in the truest sympathy, "remember this, my Natalie: we all have

our destiny as women, just as men have their vocation as men. A woman is born to be a woman of the world

and a charming hostess, as a man is born to be a general or a poet. Your vocation is to please. Your education

has formed you for society. In these days women should be educated for the salon as they once were for the

gynoecium. You were not born to be the mother of a family or the steward of a household. If you have

children, I hope they will not come to spoil your figure on the morrow of your marriage; nothing is so

bourgeois as to have a child at once. If you have them two or three years after your marriage, well and good;

governesses and tutors will bring them up. YOU are to be the lady, the great lady, who represents the luxury

and the pleasure of the house. But remember one thinglet your superiority be visible in those things only

which flatter a man's selflove; hide the superiority you must also acquire over him in great things."

"But you frighten me, mamma," cried Natalie. "How can I remember all these precepts? How shall I ever

manage, I, such a child, and so heedless, to reflect and calculate before I act?"

"But, my dear little girl, I am telling you today that which you must surely learn later, buying your

experience by fatal faults and errors of conduct which will cause you bitter regrets and embarrass your whole

"Instinct will guide you," replied her mother. "At this moment Paul desires you more than he loves you; for

love born of desires is a hope; the love that succeeds their satisfaction is the reality. There, my dear, is the

question; there lies your power. What woman is not loved before marriage? Be so on the morrow and you

shall remain so always. Paul is a weak man who is easily trained to habit. If he yields to you once he will

yield always. A woman ardently desired can ask all things; do not commit the folly of many women who do

not see the importance of the first hours of their sway,that of wasting your power on trifles, on silly things

with no result. Use the empire your husband's first emotions give you to accustom him to obedience. And

when you make him yield, choose that it be on some unreasonable point, so as to test the measure of your

power by the measure of his concession. What victory would there be in making him agree to a reasonable

thing? Would that be obeying you? We must always, as the Castilian proverb says, take the bull by the horns;

when a bull has once seen the inutility of his defence and of his strength he is beaten. When your husband

"Because, my child, marriage lasts a lifetime, and a husband is not a man like other men. Therefore, never

commit the folly of giving yourself into his power in everything. Keep up a constant reserve in your speech

and in your actions. You may even be cold to him without danger, for you can modify coldness at will.

Besides, nothing is more easy to maintain than our dignity. The words, 'It is not becoming in your wife to do

thus and so,' is a great talisman. The life of a woman lies in the words, 'I will not.' They are the final

argument. Feminine power is in them, and therefore they should only be used on real occasions. But they

constitute a means of governing far beyond that of argument or discussion. I, my dear child, reigned over

your father by his faith in me. If your husband believes in you, you can do all things with him. To inspire that

belief you must make him think that you understand him. Do not suppose that that is an easy thing to do. A

woman can always make a man think that he is loved, but to make him admit that he is understood is far

more difficult. I am bound to tell you all now, my child, for tomorrow life with its complications, life with

two wills which MUST be made one, begins for you. Bear in mind, at all moments, that difficulty. The only

means of harmonizing your two wills is to arrange from the first that there shall be but one; and that will must

be yours. Many persons declare that a wife creates her own unhappiness by changing sides in this way; but,

my dear, she can only become the mistress by controlling events instead of bearing them; and that advantage

Natalie kissed her mother's hands with tears of gratitude. Like all women in whom mental emotion is never

warmed by physical emotion, she suddenly comprehended the bearings of this feminine policy; but, like a

spoiled child that never admits the force of reason and returns obstinately to its one desire, she came back to

the charge with one of those personal arguments which the logic of a child suggests:

"Dear mamma," she said, "it is only a few days since you were talking of Paul's advancement, and saying that

you alone could promote it; why, then, do you suddenly turn round and abandon us to ourselves?"

"I did not then know the extent of my obligations nor the amount of my debts," replied the mother, who

would not suffer her real motive to be seen. "Besides, a year or two hence I can take up that matter again.

Come, let us dress; Paul will be here soon. Be as sweet and caressing as you were,you know?that night

when we first discussed this fatal contract; for today we must save the last fragments of our fortune, and I

Paul arrived about four o'clock. Though he endeavored to meet his motherinlaw with a gracious look upon

his face, Madame Evangelista saw traces of the clouds which the counsels of the night and the reflections of

"Mathias has told him!" she thought, resolving to defeat the old notary's action. "My dear son," she said, "you

left your diamonds in the drawer of the console, and I frankly confess that I would rather not see again the

things that threatened to bring a cloud between us. Besides, as Monsieur Mathias said, they ought to be sold

"They are not mine," he said. "I have given them to Natalie, and when you see them upon her you will forget

Madame Evangelista took his hand and pressed it cordially, with a tear of emotion.

"Listen to me, my dear children," she said, looking from Paul to Natalie; "since you really feel thus, I have a

proposition to make to both of you. I find myself obliged to sell my pearl necklace and my earrings. Yes,

Paul, it is necessary; I do not choose to put a penny of my fortune into an annuity; I know what I owe to you.

Well, I admit a weakness; to sell the 'Discreto' seems to me a disaster. To sell a diamond which bears the

name of Philip the Second and once adorned his royal hand, an historic stone which the Duke of Alba

touched for ten years in the hilt of his swordno, no, I cannot! Elie Magus estimates my necklace and

earrings at a hundred and some odd thousand francs without the clasps. Will you exchange the other jewels

I made over to you for these? you will gain by the transaction, but what of that? I am not selfish. Instead of

those mere fancy jewels, Paul, your wife will have fine diamonds which she can really enjoy. Isn't it better

that I should sell those ornaments which will surely go out of fashion, and that you should keep in the family

"I," replied Madame Evangelista, "I want such things no longer. Yes, Paul, I am going to be your bailiff at

Lanstrac. It would be folly in me to go to Paris at the moment when I ought to be here to liquidate my

"Dear mother," said Paul, much moved, "ought I to accept this exchange without paying you the difference?"

"Good heavens! are you not, both of you, my dearest interests? Do you suppose I shall not find happiness in

thinking, as I sit in my chimneycorner, 'Natalie is dazzling tonight at the Duchesse de Berry's ball'? When

she sees my diamond at her throat and my earrings in her ears she will have one of those little enjoyments of

vanity which contribute so much to a woman's happiness and make her so gay and fascinating. Nothing

saddens a woman more than to have her vanity repressed; I have never seen an illdressed woman who was

"Heavens! what was Mathias thinking about?" thought Paul. "Well, then, mamma," he said, in a low voice, "I

At this moment Solonet arrived to announce the good news that he had found among the speculators of

Bordeaux two contractors who were much attracted by the house, the gardens of which could be covered with

"They offer two hundred and fifty thousand francs," he said; "but if you consent to the sale, I can make them

"My husband paid two hundred thousand for the place, therefore I consent," she replied. "But you must

"I am told that a great many persons are coming to your midnight service," said Solonet, perceiving that his

Madame Evangelista accompanied him to the door of the last salon, and there she said, in a low voice:

"I now have personal property to the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand francs; if I can get two

hundred thousand for my share of the house it will make a handsome capital, which I shall want to invest to

the very best advantage. I count on you for that. I shall probably live at Lanstrac."

The young notary kissed his client's hand with a gesture of gratitude; for the widow's tone of voice made

Solonet fancy that this alliance, really made from selfinterest only, might extend a little farther.

"You can count on me," he replied. "I can find you investments in merchandise on which you will risk

"Adieu until tomorrow," she said; "you are to be our witness, you know, with Monsieur le Marquis de

"My dear mother," said Paul, when she returned to them, "why do you refuse to come to Paris? Natalie is

"I have thought it all over, my children, and I am sure that I should hamper you. You would feel obliged to

make me a third in all you did, and young people have ideas of their own which I might, unintentionally,

thwart. Go to Paris. I do not wish to exercise over the Comtesse de Manerville the gentle authority I have

held over Natalie. I desire to leave her wholly to you. Don't you see, Paul, that there are habits and ways

between us which must be broken up? My influence ought to yield to yours. I want you to love me, and to

believe that I have your interests more at heart than you think for. Young husbands are, sooner or later,

jealous for the love of a wife for her mother. Perhaps they are right. When you are thoroughly united, when

love has blended your two souls into one, then, my dear son, you will not fear an opposing influence if I live

in your house. I know the world, and men, and things; I have seen the peace of many a home destroyed by the

blind love of mothers who made themselves in the end as intolerable to their daughters as to their

sonsinlaw. The affection of old people is often exacting and querulous. Perhaps I could not efface myself

as I should. I have the weakness to think myself still handsome; I have flatterers who declare that I am still

agreeable; I should have, I fear, certain pretensions which might interfere with your lives. Let me, therefore,

make one more sacrifice for your happiness. I have given you my fortune, and now I desire to resign to you

my last vanities as a woman. Your notary Mathias is getting old. He cannot look after your estates as I will. I

will be your bailiff; I will create for myself those natural occupations which are the pleasures of old age.

Later, if necessary, I will come to you in Paris, and second you in your projects of ambition. Come, Paul, be

Paul would not admit it, but he was at heart delighted to get his liberty. The suspicions which Mathias had put

into his mind respecting his motherinlaw were, however, dissipated by this conversation, which Madame

"My mother was right," thought Natalie, who had watched Paul's countenance. "He IS glad to know that I am

That "why" was the first note of a rising distrust; did it prove the power of those maternal instructions?

There are certain characters which on the faith of a single proof believe in friendship. To persons thus

constituted the north wind drives away the clouds as rapidly as the south wind brings them; they stop at

effects and never hark back to causes. Paul had one of those essentially confiding natures, without

illfeelings, but also without foresight. His weakness proceeded far more from his kindness, his belief in

Natalie was sad and thoughtful, for she knew not what to do without her mother. Paul, with that

selfconfident conceit which comes of love, smiled to himself at her sadness, thinking how soon the

pleasures of marriage and the excitements of Paris would drive it away. Madame Evangelista saw this

confidence with much satisfaction. She had already taken two great steps. Her daughter possessed the

diamonds which had cost Paul two hundred thousand francs; and she had gained her point of leaving these

two children to themselves with no other guide than their illogical love. Her revenge was thus preparing,

unknown to her daughter, who would, sooner or later, become its accomplice. Did Natalie love Paul? That

was a question still undecided, the answer to which might modify her projects, for she loved her daughter too

sincerely not to respect her happiness. Paul's future, therefore, still depended on himself. If he could make his

The next day, at midnight, after an evening spent together, with the addition of the four witnesses, to whom

Madame Evangelista gave the formal dinner which follows the legal marriage, the bridal pair, accompanied

by their friends, heard mass by torchlight, in presence of a crowd of inquisitive persons. A marriage

celebrated at night always suggests to the mind an unpleasant omen. Light is the symbol of life and pleasure,

the forecasts of which are lacking to a midnight wedding. Ask the intrepid soul why it shivers; why the chill

of those black arches enervates it; why the sound of steps startles it; why it notices the cry of bats and the

hoot of owls. Though there is absolutely no reason to tremble, all present do tremble, and the darkness,

emblem of death, saddens them. Natalie, parted from her mother, wept. The girl was now a prey to those

doubts which grasp the heart as it enters a new career in which, despite all assurances of happiness, a

thousand pitfalls await the steps of a young wife. She was cold and wanted a mantle. The air and manner of

Madame Evangelista and that of the bridal pair excited some comment among the elegant crowd which

"Solonet tells me that the bride and bridegroom leave for Paris tomorrow morning, all alone."

"What a mistake!" said the Marquise de Gyas. "To shut the door on the mother of his wife is to open it to a

"He has been very hard on Madame Evangelista; the poor woman has had to sell her house and her diamonds,

"I am glad I came here tonight," said a lady. "I am now convinced of the necessity of the pomps of marriage

and of wedding fetes; a scene like this is very bare and sad. If I may say what I think," she added, in a

Madame Evangelista took Natalie in her carriage and accompanied her, alone, to Paul's house.

"Remember, my dear child, my last advice, and you will be a happy woman. Be his wife, and not his

When Natalie had retired, the mother played the little comedy of flinging herself with tears into the arms of

her soninlaw. It was the only provincial thing that Madame Evangelista allowed herself, but she had her

reasons for it. Amid tears and speeches, apparently half wild and despairing, she obtained of Paul those

The next day she put the married pair into their carriage, and accompanied them to the ferry, by which the

road to Paris crosses the Gironde. With a look and a word Natalie enabled her mother to see that if Paul had

won the trick in the game of the contract, her revenge was beginning. Natalie was already reducing her

Five years later, on an afternoon in the month of November, Comte Paul de Manerville, wrapped in a cloak,

was entering, with a bowed head and a mysterious manner, the house of his old friend Monsieur Mathias at

Too old to continue in business, the worthy notary had sold his practice and was ending his days peacefully in

a quiet house to which he had retired. An urgent affair had obliged him to be absent at the moment of his

guest's arrival, but his housekeeper, warned of Paul's coming, took him to the room of the late Madame

Mathias, who had been dead a year. Fatigued by a rapid journey, Paul slept till evening. When the old man

reached home he went up to his client's room, and watched him sleeping, as a mother watches her child.

Josette, the old housekeeper, followed her master and stood before the bed, her hands on her hips.

"It is a year today, Josette, since I received my dear wife's last sigh; I little knew then that I should stand

"Sac a papier!" cried the old notary, an innocent oath which was a sign with him of the despair on a man of

business before insurmountable difficulties. "At any rate," he thought, "I have saved the title to the Lanstrac

estate for him, and that of Ausac, Saint Froult, and his house, though the usufruct has gone." Mathias

counted his fingers. "Five years! Just five years this month, since his old aunt, now dead, that excellent

Madame de Maulincour, asked for the hand of that little crocodile of a woman, who has finally ruined him

And the gouty old gentleman, leaning on his cane, went to walk in the little garden till his guest should

awake. At nine o'clock supper was served, for Mathias took supper. The old man was not a little astonished,

when Paul joined him, to see that his old client's brow was calm and his face serene, though noticeably

changed. If at the age of thirtythree the Comte de Manerville seemed to be a man of forty, that change in his

appearance was due solely to mental shocks; physically, he was well. He clasped the old man's hand

"If I had not a son in the magistracy, and a daughter married," said the good old man, "you would have found

in old Mathias, believe me, Monsieur le comte, something better than mere hospitality. Why have you come

to Bordeaux at the very moment when posters are on all the walls of the seizure of your farms at Grassol and

Guadet, the vineyard of BelleRose and the family mansion? I cannot tell you the grief I feel at the sight of

those placards,I, who for forty years nursed that property as if it belonged to me; I, who bought it for your

mother when I was only third clerk to Monsieur Chesnau, my predecessor, and wrote the deeds myself in my

best round hand; I, who have those titles now in my successor's office; I, who have known you since you

were so high"; and the old man stopped to put his hand near the ground. "Ah! a man must have been a notary

for fortyone years and a half to know the sort of grief I feel to see my name exposed before the face of Israel

in those announcements of the seizure and sale of the property. When I pass through the streets and see men

reading these horrible yellow posters, I am ashamed, as if my own honor and ruin were concerned. Some

fools will stand there and read them aloud expressly to draw other fools about themand what imbecile

remarks they make! As if a man were not master of his own property! Your father ran through two fortunes

before he made the one he left you; and you wouldn't be a Manerville if you didn't do likewise. Besides,

seizures of real estate have a whole section of the Code to themselves; they are expected and provided for;

you are in a position recognized by the law.If I were not an old man with white hair, I would thrash those

fools I hear reading aloud in the streets such an abomination as this," added the worthy notary, taking up a

paper; "'At the request of Dame Natalie Evangelista, wife of PaulFrancoisJoseph, Comte de Manerville,

separated from him as to worldly goods and chattels by the Lower court of the department of the Seine'"

"Oh! against my wife's will," added the count, hastily. "I was forced to deceive her; she did not know that I

"Two day's hence!" cried the notary. "Then, Monsieur le comte, we shall never meet again."

"You are only seventythree, my dear Mathias, and you have the gout, the brevet of old age. When I return I

shall find you still afoot. Your good head and heart will be as sound as ever, and you will help me to

reconstruct what is now a shaken edifice. I intend to make a noble fortune in seven years. I shall be only forty

"You?" said Mathias, with a gesture of amazement,you, Monsieur le comte, to undertake commerce! How

"I am no longer Monsieur le comte, dear Mathias. My passage is taken under the name of Camille, one of my

mother's baptismal names. I have acquirements which will enable me to make my fortune otherwise than in

business. Commerce, at any rate, will be only my final chance. I start with a sum in hand sufficient for the

The old man dropped his fork as he heard the word "friend," not in surprise, not scoffingly, but in grief; his

look and manner expressed the pain he felt in finding Paul under the influence of a deceitful illusion; his

"I have been fifty years in the notariat," he said, "and I never yet knew a ruined man whose friend would lend

"You don't know de Marsay. I am certain that he has sold out some of his investments already, and

tomorrow you will receive from him a bill of exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand francs."

"I hope I may. If that be so, cannot your friend settle your difficulties here? You could live quietly at Lanstrac

"No assignment or economy on my part could pay off fifteen hundred thousand francs of debt, in which my

"You cannot mean to say that in four years you have incurred a million and a half of debt?"

"Nothing is more certain, Mathias. Did I not give those diamonds to my wife? Did I not spend the hundred

and fifty thousand I received from the sale of Madame Evangelista's house, in the arrangement of my house

in Paris? Was I not forced to use other money for the first payments on that property demanded by the

marriage contract? I was even forced to sell out Natalie's forty thousand a year in the Funds to complete the

purchase of Auzac and SaintFroult. We sold at eightyseven, therefore I became in debt for over two

hundred thousand francs within a month after my marriage. That left us only sixtyseven thousand francs a

year; but we spent fully three times as much every year. Add all that up, together with rates of interest to

"Well, I wanted, in the first place, to complete for my wife that set of jewels of which she had the pearl

necklace clasped by the family diamond, the 'Discreto,' and her mother's earrings. I paid a hundred thousand

francs for a coronet of diamond wheatears. There's eleven hundred thousand. And now I find I owe the

fortune of my wife, which amounts to three hundred and sixtysix thousand francs of her 'dot.'"

"But," said Mathias, "if Madame la comtesse had given up her diamonds and you had pledged your income

"When a man is down, Mathias, when his property is covered with mortgages, when his wife's claims take

precedence of his creditors', and when that man has notes out for a hundred thousand francs which he must

pay (and I hope I can do so out of the increased value of my property here), what you propose is not

"This is dreadful!" cried Mathias; "would you sell BelleRose with the vintage of 1825 still in the cellars?"

"I might push the price to seven hundred thousand, and the farms are worth a hundred thousand each."

"Solonet will give more than that; he wants it. He is retiring with a handsome property made by gambling on

the Funds. He has sold his practice for three hundred thousand francs, and marries a mulatto woman. God

knows how she got her money, but they say it amounts to millions. A notary gambling in stocks! a notary

marrying a black woman! What an age! It is said that he speculates for your motherin law with her funds."

"She has greatly improved Lanstrac and taken great pains with its cultivation. She has amply repaid me for

"She is so kind and so devoted; she has always paid Natalie's debts during the three months she spent with us

"She could well afford to do so, for she gets her living out of Lanstrac," said Mathias. "She! grown

economical! what a miracle! I am told she has just bought the domain of Grainrouge between Lanstrac and

Grassol; so that if the Lanstrac avenue were extended to the high road, you would drive four and a half

miles through your own property to reach the house. She paid one hundred thousand francs down for

"She is as handsome as ever," said Paul; "country life preserves her freshness; I don't mean to go to Lanstrac

"You would go in vain; she is now in Paris. She probably arrived there as you left."

"No doubt she had heard of the sale of my property and came to help me. I have no complaint to make of life,

Mathias. I am truly loved, as much as any man ever could be here below; beloved by two women who

outdo each other in devotion; they are even jealous of each other; the daughter blames the mother for loving

me too much, and the mother reproaches the daughter for what she calls her dissipations. I may say that this

great affection has been my ruin. How could I fail to satisfy even the slightest caprice of a loving wife?

Impossible to restrain myself! Neither could I accept any sacrifice on her part. We might certainly, as you

say, live at Lanstrac, save my income, and part with her diamonds, but I would rather go to India and work

for a fortune than tear my Natalie from the life she enjoys. So it was I who proposed the separation as to

property. Women are angels who ought not to be mixed up in the sordid interests of life."

"That is not my idea of marriage," remarked the old notary, naively. "A wife ought, in my opinion, to share

the good and evil fortunes of her husband. I have heard that young married people who love like lovers, do

not want children? Is pleasure the only object of marriage? I say that object should be the joys of family.

Moreover, in this case I am afraid you will think me too much of notaryyour marriage contract made it

incumbent upon you to have a son. Yes, monsieur le comte, you ought to have had at once a male heir to

consolidate that entail. Why not? Madame Evangelista was strong and healthy; she had nothing to fear in

maternity. You will tell me, perhaps, that these are the oldfashioned notions of our ancestors. But in those

noble families, Monsieur le comte, the legitimate wife thought it her duty to bear children and bring them up

nobly; as the Duchesse de Sully, the wife of the great Sully, said, a wife is not an instrument of pleasure, but

"You don't know women, my good Mathias," said Paul. "In order to be happy we must love them as they

want to be loved. Isn't there something brutal in at once depriving a wife of her charms, and spoiling her

"If you had had children your wife would not have dissipated your fortune; she would have stayed at home

"If you were right, dear friend," said Paul, frowning, "I should be still more unhappy than I am. Do not

aggravate my sufferings by preaching to me after my fall. Let me go, without the pang of looking backward

The next day Mathias received a bill of exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand francs from de Marsay.

"You see," said Paul, "he does not write a word to me. He begins by obliging me. Henri's nature is the most

imperfectly perfect, the most illegally beautiful that I know. If you knew with what superiority that man, still

young, can rise above sentiments, above self interests, and judge them, you would be astonished, as I am, to

Mathias tried to battle with Paul's determination, but he found it irrevocable, and it was justified by so many

cogent reasons that the old man finally ceased his endeavors to retain his client.

It is seldom that vessels sail promptly at the time appointed, but on this occasion, by a fateful circumstance

for Paul, the wind was fair and the "BelleAmelie" sailed on the morrow, as expected. The quay was lined

with relations, and friends, and idle persons. Among them were several who had formerly known Manerville.

His disaster, posted on the walls of the town, made him as celebrated as he was in the days of his wealth and

fashion. Curiosity was aroused; every one had their word to say about him. Old Mathias accompanied his

client to the quay, and his sufferings were sore as he caught a few words of those remarks:

"Who could recognize in that man you see over there, near old Mathias, the dandy who was called the Pink of

Fashion five years ago, and made, as they say, 'fair weather and foul' in Bordeaux."

"What! that stout, short man in the alpaca overcoat, who looks like a groom,is that Comte Paul de

"Yes, my dear, the same who married Mademoiselle Evangelista. Here he is, ruined, without a penny to his

"Besides," said another, "Manerville always was a poor creature; no mind, soft as papiermache, he'd let

anybody shear the wool from his back; incapable of anything, no matter what. He was born to be ruined."

Paul wrung the hand of the old man and went on board. Mathias stood upon the pier, looking at his client,

who leaned against the shrouds, defying the crowed before him with a glance of contempt. At the moment

when the sailors began to weigh anchor, Paul noticed that Mathias was making signals to him with his

handkerchief. The old housekeeper had hurried to her master, who seemed to be excited by some sudden

event. Paul asked the captain to wait a moment, and send a boat to the pier, which was done. Too feeble

"My friend," he said, "this packet" (showing one of the two letters) "is important; it has just arrived by a

courier from Paris in thirty five hours. State this to Monsieur le comte; don't neglect to do so; it may change

The sailor is, in all lands, a being of a race apart, holding all landfolk in contempt. This one happened to be

"Come ashore, indeed!" he thought, as he rowed. "Make the captain lose a passenger! If one listened to those

walruses we'd have nothing to do but embark and disembark 'em. He's afraid that son of his will catch cold."

The sailor gave Paul the letter and said not a word of the message. Recognizing the handwriting of his wife

and de Marsay, Paul supposed that he knew what they both would urge upon him. Anxious not to be

influenced by offers which he believed their devotion to his welfare would inspire, he put the letters in his

Absorbed in the sad thoughts which assail the strongest man under such circumstances, Paul gave way to his

grief as he waved his hand to his old friend, and bade farewell to France, watching the steeples of Bordeaux

as they fled out of sight. He seated himself on a coil of rope. Night overtook him still lost in thought. With

the semidarkness of the dying day came doubts; he cast an anxious eye into the future. Sounding it, and

finding there uncertainty and danger, he asked his soul if courage would fail him. A vague dread seized his

mind as he thought of Natalie left wholly to herself; he repented the step he had taken; he regretted Paris and

his life there. Suddenly seasickness overcame him. Every one knows the effect of that disorder. The most

horrible of its sufferings devoid of danger is a complete dissolution of the will. An inexplicable distress

relaxes to their very centre the cords of vitality; the soul no longer performs its functions; the sufferer

becomes indifferent to everything; the mother forgets her child, the lover his mistress, the strongest man lies

prone, like an inert mass. Paul was carried to his cabin, where he stayed three days, lying on his back, gorged

with grog by the sailors, or vomiting; thinking of nothing, and sleeping much. Then he revived into a species

of convalescence, and returned by degrees to his ordinary condition. The first morning after he felt better he

went on deck and passed the poop, breathing in the salt breezes of another atmosphere. Putting his hands into

his pockets he felt the letters. At once he opened them, beginning with that of his wife.

In order that the letter of the Comtesse de Manerville be fully understood, it is necessary to give the one

My beloved,When you read this letter I shall be far away from you; perhaps already on the vessel which is

I have not found courage to tell you of my departure. I have deceived you; but it was best to do so. You

would only have been uselessly distressed; you would have wished to sacrifice your fortune, and that I could

not have suffered. Dear Natalie, feel no remorse; I have no regrets. When I return with millions I shall imitate

your father and lay them at your feet, as he laid his at the feet of your mother, saying to you: "All I have is

I love you madly, Natalie; I say this without fear that the avowal will lead you to strain a power which none

but weak men fear; yours has been boundless from the day I knew you first. My love is the only accomplice

in my disaster. I have felt, as my ruin progressed, the delirious joys of a gambler; as the money diminished,

so my enjoyment grew. Each fragment of my fortune turned into some little pleasure for you gave me untold

happiness. I could have wished that you had more caprices that I might gratify them all. I knew I was

marching to a precipice, but I went on crowned with joys of which a common heart knows nothing. I have

acted like those lovers who take refuge in a cottage on the shores of some lake for a year or two, resolved to

kill themselves at last; dying thus in all the glory of their illusions and their love. I have always thought such

You have known nothing of my pleasures or my sacrifices. The greatest joy of all was to hide from the one

beloved the cost of her desires. I can reveal these secrets to you now, for when you hold this paper, heavy

with love, I shall be far away. Though I lose the treasures of your gratitude, I do not suffer that contraction of

the heart which would disable me if I spoke to you of these matters. Besides, my own beloved, is there not a

tender calculation in thus revealing to you the history of the past? Does it not extend our love into the

future?But we need no such supports! We love each other with a love to which proof is needless,a love

Ah! Natalie, I have just looked at you asleep, trustful, restful as a little child, your hand stretched toward me.

I left a tear upon the pillow which has known our precious joys. I leave you without fear, on the faith of that

attitude; I go to win the future of our love by bringing home to you a fortune large enough to gratify your

every taste, and let no shadow of anxiety disturb our joys. Neither you nor I can do without enjoyments in the

life we live. To me belongs the task of providing the necessary fortune. I am a man; and I have courage.

Perhaps you might seek to follow me. For that reason I conceal from you the name of the vessel, the port

from which I sail, and the day of sailing. After I am gone, when too late to follow me, a friend will tell you

Natalie! my affection is boundless. I love you as a mother loves her child, as a lover loves his mistress, with

absolute unselfishness. To me the toil, to you the pleasures; to me all sufferings, to you all happiness. Amuse

yourself; continue your habits of luxury; go to theatres and operas, enjoy society and balls; I leave you free

for all things. Dear angel, when you return to this nest where for five years we have tasted the fruits which

love has ripened think of your friend; think for a moment of me, and rest upon my heart.

That is all I ask of you. For myself, dear eternal thought of mine! whether under burning skies, toiling for

both of us, I face obstacles to vanquish, or whether, weary with the struggle, I rest my mind on hopes of a

return, I shall think of you alone; of you who are my life,my blessed life! Yes, I shall live in you. I shall

tell myself daily that you have no troubles, no cares; that you are happy. As in our natural lives of day and

night, of sleeping and waking, I shall have sunny days in Paris, and nights of toil in India,a painful dream,

a joyful reality; and I shall live so utterly in that reality that my actual life will pass as a dream. I shall have

memories! I shall recall, line by line, strophe by strophe, our glorious five years' poem. I shall remember the

days of your pleasure in some new dress or some adornment which made you to my eyes a fresh delight. Yes,

dear angel, I go like a man vowed to some great emprize, the guerdon of which, if success attend him, is the

recovery of his beautiful mistress. Oh! my precious love, my Natalie, keep me as a religion in your heart. Be

the child that I have just seen asleep! If you betray my confidence, my blind confidence, you need not fear

my angerbe sure of that; I should die silently. But a wife does not deceive the man who leaves her

freefor woman is never base. She tricks a tyrant; but an easy treachery, which would kill its victim, she

will not commitNo, no! I will not think of it. Forgive this cry, this single cry, so natural to the heart of

Dear love, you will see de Marsay; he is now the lessee of our house, and he will leave you in possession of

it. This nominal lease was necessary to avoid a useless loss. Our creditors, ignorant that their payment is a

question of time only, would otherwise have seized the furniture and the temporary possession of the house.

Be kind to de Marsay; I have the most entire confidence in his capacity and his loyalty. Take him as your

defender and adviser, make him your slave. However occupied, he will always find time to be devoted to

you. I have placed the liquidation of my affairs and the payment of the debts in his hands. If he should

advance some sum of which he should later feel in need I rely on you to pay it back. Remember, however,

that I do not leave you to de Marsay, but TO YOURSELF; I do not seek to impose him upon you.

Alas! I have but an hour more to stay beside you; I cannot spend that hour in writing businessI count your

breaths; I try to guess your thoughts in the slight motions of your sleep. I would I could infuse my blood into

your veins that you might be a part of me, my thought your thought, and your heart mineA murmur has

just escaped your lips as though it were a soft reply. Be calm and beautiful forever as you are now! Ah!

would that I possessed that fabulous fairy power which, with a wand, could make you sleep while I am

How much I must love you, how much energy of soul I must possess, to leave you as I see you now! Adieu,

my cherished one. Your poor Pink of Fashion is blown away by stormy winds, butthe wings of his good

luck shall waft him back to you. No, my Ninie, I am not bidding you farewell, for I shall never leave you. Are

you not the soul of my actions? Is not the hope of returning with happiness indestructible for YOU the end

and aim of my endeavor? Does it not lead my every step? You will be with me everywhere. Ah! it will not be

the sun of India, but the fire of your eyes that lights my way. Therefore be happyas happy as a woman can

be without her lover. I would the last kiss that I take from those dear lips were not a passive one; but, my

Ninie, my adored one, I will not wake you. When you wake, you will find a tear upon your foreheadmake

it a talisman! Think, think of him who may, perhaps, die for you, far from you; think less of the husband than

Dear, beloved one,Your letter has plunged me into affliction. Had you the right to take this course, which

must affect us equally, without consulting me? Are you free? Do you not belong to me? If you must go, why

should I not follow you? You show me, Paul, that I am not indispensable to you. What have I done, to be

deprived of my rights? Surely I count for something in this ruin. My luxuries have weighed somewhat in the

scale. You make me curse the happy, careless life we have led for the last five years. To know that you are

banished from France for years is enough to kill me. How soon can a fortune be made in India? Will you ever

I was right when I refused, with instinctive obstinacy, that separation as to property which my mother and

you were so determined to carry out. What did I tell you then? Did I not warn you that it was casting a

reflection upon you, and would ruin your credit? It was not until you were really angry that I gave way.

My dear Paul, never have you been so noble in my eyes as you are at this moment. To despair of nothing, to

start courageously to seek a fortune! Only your character, your strength of mind could do it. I sit at your feet.

A man who avows his weakness with your good faith, who rebuilds his fortune from the same motive that

made him wreck it, for love's sake, for the sake of an irresistible passion, oh, Paul, that man is sublime!

Therefore, fear nothing; go on, through all obstacles, not doubting your Nataliefor that would be doubting

yourself. Poor darling, you mean to live in me? And I shall ever be in you. I shall not be here; I shall be

Though your letter has caused me the keenest pain, it has also filled me with joyyou have made me know

those two extremes! Seeing how you love me, I have been proud to learn that my love is truly felt. Sometimes

I have thought that I loved you more than you loved me. Now, I admit myself vanquished, you have added

the delightful superiorityof lovingto all the others with which you are blest. That precious letter in

which your soul reveals itself will lie upon my heart during all your absence; for my soul, too, is in it; that

I shall go to live at Lanstrac with my mother. I die to the world; I will economize my income and pay your

debts to their last farthing. From this day forth, Paul, I am another woman. I bid farewell forever to society; I

will have no pleasures that you cannot share. Besides, Paul, I ought to leave Paris and live in retirement. Dear

friend, you will soon have a noble reason to make your fortune. If your courage needed a spur you would find

it in this. Cannot you guess? We shall have a child. Your cherished desires are granted. I feared to give you

one of those false hopes which hurt so muchhave we not had grief enough already on that score? I was

determined not to be mistaken in this good news. Today I feel certain, and it makes me happy to shed this

This morning, fearing nothing and thinking you still at home, I went to the Assumption; all things smiled

upon me; how could I foresee misfortune? As I left the church I met my mother; she had heard of your

distress, and came, by post, with all her savings, thirty thousand francs, hoping to help you. Ah! what a heart

is hers, Paul! I felt joyful, and hurried home to tell you this good news, and to breakfast with you in the

greenhouse, where I ordered just the dainties that you like. Well, Augustine brought me your letter,a letter

from you, when we had slept together! A cold fear seized me; it was like a dream! I read your letter! I read it

weeping, and my mother shared my tears. I was halfdead. Such love, such courage, such happiness, such

misery! The richest fortunes of the heart, and the momentary ruin of all interests! To lose you at a moment

when my admiration of your greatness thrilled me! what woman could have resisted such a tempest of

emotion? To know you far away when your hand upon my heart would have stilled its throbbings; to feel that

YOU were not here to give me that look so precious to me, to rejoice in our new hopes; that I was not with

you to soften your sorrows by those caresses which made your Natalie so dear to you! I wished to start, to

follow you, to fly to you. But my mother told me you had taken passage in a ship which leaves Bordeaux

tomorrow, that I could not reach you except by post, and, moreover, that it was madness in my present state

to risk our future by attempting to follow you. I could not bear such violent emotions; I was taken ill, and am

My mother is doing all she can to stop certain calumnies which seem to have got about on your disaster. The

Vandenesses, Charles and Felix, have earnestly defended you; but your friend de Marsay treats the affair

satirically. He laughs at your accusers instead of replying to them. I do not like his way of lightly brushing

aside such serious attacks. Are you not deceived in him? However, I will obey you; I will make him my

friend. Do not be anxious, my adored one, on the points that concern your honor; is it not mine as well? My

diamonds shall be pledged; we intend, mamma and I, to employ our utmost resources in the payment of your

debts; and we shall try to buy back your vineyard at BelleRose. My mother, who understands business like a

lawyer, blames you very much for not having told her of your embarrassments. She would not have bought

thinking to please youthe Grainrouge domain, and then she could have lent you that money as well as

the thirty thousand francs she brought with her. She is in despair at your decision; she fears the climate of

India for your health. She entreats you to be sober, and not to let yourself be trapped by womenThat made

me laugh; I am as sure of you as I am of myself. You will return to me rich and faithful. I alone know your

feminine delicacy, and the secret sentiments which make you a human flower worthy of the gardens of

But alas! who will take care of my delicate flower? My heart is rent with dreadful ideas. I, his wife, Natalie, I

am here, and perhaps he suffers far away from me! And not to share your pains, your vexations, your

dangers! In whom will you confide? how will you live without that ear into which you have hitherto poured

all? Dear, sensitive plant, swept away by this storm, will you be able to survive in another soil than your

It seems to me that I have been alone for centuries. I have wept sorely. To be the cause of your ruin! What a

text for the thoughts of a loving woman! You treated me like a child to whom we give all it asks, or like a

courtesan, allowed by some thoughtless youth to squander his fortune. Ah! such indulgence was, in truth, an

insult. Did you think I could not live without fine dresses, balls and operas and social triumphs? Am I so

frivolous a woman? Do you think me incapable of serious thought, of ministering to your fortune as I have to

your pleasures? If you were not so far away, and so unhappy, I would blame you for that impertinence. Why

lower your wife in that way? Good heavens! what induced me to go into society at all?to flatter your

vanity; I adorned myself for you, as you well know. If I did wrong, I am punished, cruelly; your absence is a

Perhaps my happiness was too complete; it had to be paid by some great trialand here it is. There is

nothing now for me but solitude. Yes, I shall live at Lanstrac, the place your father laid out, the house you

yourself refurnished so luxuriously. There I shall live, with my mother and my child, and await

you,sending you daily, night and morning, the prayers of all. Remember that our love is a talisman against

all evil. I have no more doubt of you than you can have of me. What comfort can I put into this letter,I so

desolate, so broken, with the lonely years before me, like a desert to cross. But no! I am not utterly unhappy;

And now, adieu, my own beloved; our love and prayers will follow you. The tears you see upon this paper

will tell you much that I cannot write. I kiss you on this little square of paper, see! below. Take those kisses

This letter threw Paul into a reverie caused as much by memories of the past as by these fresh assurances of

love. The happier a man is, the more he trembles. In souls which are exclusively tenderand exclusive

tenderness carries with it a certain amount of weakness jealousy and uneasiness exist in direct proportion

to the amount of the happiness and its extent. Strong souls are neither jealous nor fearful; jealousy is doubt,

fear is meanness. Unlimited belief is the principal attribute of a great man. If he is deceived (for strength as

well as weakness may make a man a dupe) his contempt will serve him as an axe with which to cut through

all. This greatness, however, is the exception. Which of us has not known what it is to be abandoned by the

spirit which sustains our frail machine, and to hearken to that mysterious Voice denying all? Paul, his mind

going over the past, and caught here and there by irrefutable facts, believed and doubted all. Lost in thought,

a prey to an awful and involuntary incredulity, which was combated by the instincts of his own pure love and

his faith in Natalie, he read and reread that wordy letter, unable to decide the question which it raised either

for or against his wife. Love is sometimes as great and true when smothered in words as it is in brief, strong

To understand the situation into which Paul de Manerville was about to enter we must think of him as he was

at this moment, floating upon the ocean as he floated upon his past, looking back upon the years of his life as

he looked at the limitless water and cloudless sky about him, and ending his reverie by returning, through

tumults of doubt, to faith, the pure, unalloyed and perfect faith of the Christian and the lover, which enforced

It is necessary to give here his own letter to de Marsay written on leaving Paris, to which his friend replied in

Henri,I have to say to you one of the most vital words a man can say to his friend:I am ruined. When

you read this I shall be on the point of sailing from Bordeaux to Calcutta on the brig "Belle Amelie."

You will find in the hands of your notary a deed which only needs your signature to be legal. In it, I lease my

house to you for six years at a nominal rent. Send a duplicate of that deed to my wife. I am forced to take this

precaution that Natalie may continue to live in her own home without fear of being driven out by creditors.

I also convey to you by deed the income of my share of the entailed property for four years; the whole

amounting to one hundred and fifty thousand francs, which sum I beg you to lend me and to send in a bill of

exchange on some house in Bordeaux to my notary, Maitre Mathias. My wife will give you her signature to

this paper as an endorsement of your claim to my income. If the revenues of the entail do not pay this loan as

quickly as I now expect, you and I will settle on my return. The sum I ask for is absolutely necessary to

enable me to seek my fortune in India; and if I know you, I shall receive it in Bordeaux the night before I sail.

I have acted as you would have acted in my place. I held firm to the last moment, letting no one suspect my

ruin. Before the news of the seizure of my property at Bordeaux reached Paris, I had attempted, with one

hundred thousand francs which I obtained on notes, to recover myself by play. Some lucky stroke might still

How have I ruined myself? By my own will, Henri. From the first month of my married life I saw that I could

not keep up the style in which I started. I knew the result; but I chose to shut my eyes; I could not say to my

wife, "We must leave Paris and live at Lanstrac." I have ruined myself for her as men ruin themselves for a

mistress, but I knew it all along. Between ourselves, I am neither a fool nor a weak man. A fool does not let

himself be ruled with his eyes open by a passion; and a man who starts for India to reconstruct his fortune,

I shall return rich, or I shall never return at all. Only, my dear friend, as I want wealth solely for HER, as I

must be absent six years at least, and as I will not risk being duped in any way, I confide to you my wife. I

know no better guardian. Being childless, a lover might be dangerous to her. Henri! I love her madly, basely,

without proper pride. I would forgive her, I think, an infidelity, not because I am certain of avenging it, but

because I would kill myself to leave her free and happysince I could not make her happiness myself. But

what have I to fear? Natalie feels for me that friendship which is independent of love, but which preserves

love. I have treated her like a petted child. I took such delight in my sacrifices, one led so naturally to another,

that she can never be false; she would be a monster if she were. Love begets love.

Alas! shall I tell you all, my dear Henri? I have just written her a letter in which I let her think that I go with

heart of hope and brow serene; that neither jealousy, nor doubt, nor fear is in my soul,a letter, in short,

such as a son might write to his mother, aware that he is going to his death. Good God! de Marsay, as I wrote

it hell was in my soul! I am the most wretched man on earth. Yes, yes, to you the cries, to you the grinding of

my teeth! I avow myself to you a despairing lover; I would rather live these six years sweeping the streets

beneath her windows than return a millionaire at the end of themif I could choose. I suffer agony; I shall

pass from pain to pain until I hear from you that you will take the trust which you alone can fulfil or

Oh! my dear de Marsay, this woman is indispensable to my life; she is my sun, my atmosphere. Take her

under your shield and buckler, keep her faithful to me, even if she wills it not. Yes, I could be satisfied with a

halfhappiness. Be her guardian, her chaperon, for I could have no distrust of you. Prove to her that in

betraying me she would do a low and vulgar thing, and be no better than the common run of women; tell her

She probably has fortune enough to continue her life of luxury and ease. But if she lacks a pleasure, if she has

caprices which she cannot satisfy, be her banker, and do not fear, I WILL return with wealth.

But, after all, these fears are in vain! Natalie is an angel of purity and virtue. When Felix de Vandenesse fell

deeply in love with her and began to show her certain attentions, I had only to let her see the danger, and she

instantly thanked me so affectionately that I was moved to tears. She said that her dignity and reputation

demanded that she should not close her doors abruptly to any man, but that she knew well how to dismiss

him. She did, in fact, receive him so coldly that the affair all ended for the best. We have never had any other

subject of dispute if, indeed, a friendly talk could be called a disputein all our married life.

And now, my dear Henri, I bid you farewell in the spirit of a man. Misfortune has come. No matter what the

cause, it is here. I strip to meet it. Poverty and Natalie are two irreconcilable terms. The balance may be close

between my assets and my liabilities, but no one shall have cause to complain of me. But, should any

Send letters under cover to the Governor of India at Calcutta. I have friendly relations with his family, and

some one there will care for all letters that come to me from Europe. Dear friend, I hope to find you the same

de Marsay on my return,the man who scoffs at everything and yet is receptive of the feelings of others

when they accord with the grandeur he is conscious of in himself. You stay in Paris, friend; but when you

So, so, Monsieur le comte, you have made a wreck of it! Monsieur l'ambassadeur has gone to the bottom! Are

Why, Paul, why have you kept away from me? If you had said a single word, my poor old fellow, I would

have made your position plain to you. Your wife has refused me her endorsement. May that one word unseal

your eyes! But, if that does not suffice, learn that your notes have been protested at the instigation of a Sieur

Lecuyer, formerly headclerk to Maitre Solonet, a notary in Bordeaux. That usurer in embryo (who came

from Gascony for jobbery) is the proxy of your very honorable motherinlaw, who is the actual holder of

your notes for one hundred thousand francs, on which I am told that worthy woman doled out to you only

seventy thousand. Compared with Madame Evangelista, papa Gobseck is flannel, velvet, vanilla cream, a

sleeping draught. Your vineyard of BelleRose is to fall into the clutches of your wife, to whom her mother

pays the difference between the price it goes for at the auction sale and the amount of her dower claim upon

it. Madame Evangelista will also have the farms at Guadet and Grassol, and the mortgages on your house in

Thus these two excellent women will make for themselves a united income of one hundred and twenty

thousand francs a year out of your misfortunes and forced sale of property, added to the revenue of some

The endorsement of your wife was not needed; for this morning the said Sieur Lecuyer came to offer me a

return of the sum I had lent you in exchange for a legal transfer of my rights. The vintage of 1825 which your

These two women have calculated, evidently, that you are now upon the ocean; but I send this letter by

I made Lecuyer talk. I disentangled from his lies, his language, and his reticence, the threads I lacked to bring

to light the whole plot of the domestic conspiracy hatched against you. This evening, at the Spanish embassy,

I shall offer my admiring compliments to your motherinlaw and your wife. I shall pay court to Madame

Evangelista; I intend to desert you basely, and say sly things to your discredit,nothing openly, or that

Mascarille in petticoats would detect my purpose. How did you make her such an enemy? That is what I want

to know. If you had had the wit to be in love with that woman before you married her daughter, you would

today be peer of France, Duc de Manerville, and, possibly, ambassador to Madrid.

If you had come to me at the time of your marriage, I would have helped you to analyze and know the women

to whom you were binding yourself; out of our mutual observations safety might have been yours. But,

instead of that, these women judged me, became afraid of me, and separated us. If you had not stupidly given

in to them and turned me the cold shoulder, they would never have been able to ruin you. Your wife brought

on the coldness between us, instigated by her mother, to whom she wrote two letters a week,a fact to

Within a month I shall be so intimate with your motherinlaw that I shall hear from her the reasons of the

hispanoitaliano hatred which she feels for you,for you, one of the best and kindest men on earth! Did she

hate you before her daughter fell in love with Felix de Vandenesse; that's a question in my mind. If I had not

taken a fancy to go to the East with Montriveau, Ronquerolles, and a few other good fellows of your

acquaintance, I should have been in a position to tell you something about that affair, which was beginning

just as I left Paris. I saw the first gleams even then of your misfortune. But what gentleman is base enough to

open such a subject unless appealed to? Who shall dare to injure a woman, or break that illusive mirror in

which his friend delights in gazing at the fairy scenes of a happy marriage? Illusions are the riches of the

Your wife, dear friend, is, I believe I may say, in the fullest application of the word, a fashionable woman.

She thinks of nothing but her social success, her dress, her pleasures; she goes to opera and theatre and balls;

she rises late and drives to the Bois, dines out, or gives a dinnerparty. Such a life seems to me for women

very much what war is for men; the public sees only the victors; it forgets the dead. Many delicate women

perish in this conflict; those who come out of it have iron constitutions, consequently no heart, but good

stomachs. There lies the reason of the cold insensibility of social life. Fine souls keep themselves reserved,

weak and tender natures succumb; the rest are cobblestones which hold the social organ in its place,

waterworn and rounded by the tide, but never wornout. Your wife has maintained that life with ease; she

looks made for it; she is always fresh and beautiful. To my mind the deduction is plain, she has never

To strike out love from that siliceous nature a man of iron was needed. After standing, but without enduring,

the shock of Lady Dudley, Felix was the fitting mate to Natalie. There is no great merit in divining that to

you she was indifferent. In love with her yourself, you have been incapable of perceiving the cold nature of a

young woman whom you have fashioned and trained for a man like Vandenesse. The coldness of your wife,

if you perceived it, you set down, with the stupid jurisprudence of married people, to the honor of her reserve

and her innocence. Like all husbands, you thought you could keep her virtuous in a society where women

No, your wife has liked the social benefits she derived from marriage, but the private burdens of it she found

rather heavy. Those burdens, that tax wasyou! Seeing nothing of all this, you have gone on digging your

abysses (to use the hackneyed words of rhetoric) and covering them with flowers. You have mildly obeyed

the law which rules the ruck of men; from which I desired to protect you. Dear fellow! only one thing was

wanting to make you as dull as the bourgeois deceived by his wife, who is all astonishment or wrath, and that

is that you should talk to me of your sacrifices, your love for Natalie, and chant that psalm: "Ungrateful

would she be if she betrayed me; I have done this, I have done that, and more will I do; I will go to the ends

of the earth, to the Indies for her sake. II" etc. My dear Paul, have you never lived in Paris, have you

never had the honor of belonging by ties of friendship to Henri de Marsay, that you should be so ignorant of

the commonest things, the primitive principles that move the feminine mechanism, the abc of their hearts?

Suppose you exterminate yourself, suppose you go to SaintPelagie for a woman's debts, suppose you kill a

score of men, desert a dozen women, serve like Laban, cross the deserts, skirt the galleys, cover yourself with

glory, cover yourself with shame, refuse, like Nelson, to fight a battle until you have kissed the shoulder of

Lady Hamilton, dash yourself, like Bonaparte, upon the bridge at Arcola, go mad like Roland, risk your life

to dance five minutes with a womanmy dear fellow, what have all those things to do with LOVE? If love

were won by samples such as those mankind would be too happy. A spurt of prowess at the moment of desire

would give a man the woman that he wanted. But love, LOVE, my good Paul, is a faith like that in the

Immaculate conception of the Holy Virgin; it comes, or it does not come. Will the mines of Potosi, or the

shedding of our blood, or the making of our fame serve to waken an involuntary, an inexplicable sentiment?

Young men like you, who expect to be loved as the balance of your account, are nothing else than usurers.

Love, my dear Paul, is the sense of pleasure given and received, and the certainty of giving and receiving it;

love is a desire incessantly moving and growing, incessantly satisfied and insatiable. The day when

Vandenesse stirred the cord of a desire in your wife's heart which you had left untouched, all your self

satisfied affection, your gifts, your deeds, your money, ceased to be even memories; one emotion of love in

your wife's heart has cast out the treasures of your own passion, which are now nothing better than old iron.

Felix has the virtues and the beauties in her eyes, and the simple moral is that blinded by your own love you

Your motherinlaw is on the side of the lover against the husband,secretly or not; she may have closed

her eyes, or she may have opened them; I know not what she has donebut one thing is certain, she is for

her daughter, and against you. During the fifteen years that I have observed society, I have never yet seen a

mother who, under such circumstances, abandons her daughter. This indulgence seems to be an inheritance

transmitted in the female line. What man can blame it? Some copyist of the Civil code, perhaps, who sees

As for your present position, the dissipation into which the life of a fashionable woman cast you, and your

own easy nature, possibly your vanity, have opened the way for your wife and her mother to get rid of you by

this ruin so skilfully contrived. From all of which you will conclude, my good friend, that the mission you

entrusted to me, and which I would all the more faithfully fulfil because it amused me, is, necessarily, null

Forgive me, dear friend, if I write to you, as you say, a la de Marsay on subjects which must seem to you very

serious. Far be it from me to dance upon the grave of a friend, like heirs upon that of a progenitor. But you

have written to me that you mean to act the part of a man, and I believe you; I therefore treat you as a man of

the world, and not as a lover. For you, this blow ought to be like the brand on the shoulder of a galleyslave,

which flings him forever into a life of systematic opposition to society. You are now freed of one evil;

Paul, I am your friend in the fullest acceptation of the word. If you had a brain in an iron skull, if you had the

energy which has come to you too late, I would have proved my friendship by telling you things that would

have made you walk upon humanity as upon a carpet. But when I did talk to you guardedly of Parisian

civilization, when I told you in the disguise of fiction some of the actual adventures of my youth, you

regarded them as mere romance and would not see their bearing. When I told you that history of a lawyer at

the galleys branded for forgery, who committed the crime to give his wife, adored like yours, an income of

thirty thousand francs, and whom his wife denounced that she might be rid of him and free to love another

man, you exclaimed, and other fools who were supping with us exclaimed against me. Well, my dear Paul,

Your friends here are not sparing you. The sister of the two Vandenesses, the Marquise de Listomere and all

her set, in which, by the bye, that little Rastignac has enrolled himself,the scamp will make his

way!Madame d'Aiglemont and her salon, the Lenoncourts, the Comtesse Ferraud, Madame d'Espard, the

Nucingens, the Spanish ambassador, in short, all the cliques in society are flinging mud upon you. You are a

bad man, a gambler, a dissipated fellow who has squandered his property. After paying your debts a great

many times, your wife, an angel of virtue, has just redeemed your notes for one hundred thousand francs,

although her property was separate from yours. Luckily, you had done the best you could do by disappearing.

If you had stayed here you would have made her bed in the straw; the poor woman would have been the

When a man attains to power, my dear Paul, he has all the virtues of an epitaph; let him fall into poverty, and

he has more sins than the Prodigal Son; society at the present moment gives you the vices of a Don Juan. You

gambled at the Bourse, you had licentious tastes which cost you fabulous sums of money to gratify; you paid

enormous interests to moneylenders. The two Vandenesses have told everywhere how Gigonnet gave you

for six thousand francs an ivory frigate, and made your valet buy it back for three hundred in order to sell it to

you again. The incident did really happen to Maxime de Trailles about nine years ago; but it fits your present

In short, I can't tell you onehalf that is said; you have supplied a whole encyclopaedia of gossip which the

women have an interest in swelling. Your wife is having an immense success. Last evening at the opera

Madame Firmiani began to repeat to me some of the things that are being said. "Don't talk of that," I replied.

"You know nothing of the real truth, you people. Paul has robbed the Bank, cheated the Treasury, murdered

Ezzelin and three Medoras in the rue SaintDenis, and I think, between ourselves, that he is a member of the

DixMille. His associate is the famous Jacques Collin, on whom the police have been unable to lay a hand

since he escaped from the galleys. Paul gave him a room in his house; you see he is capable of anything; in

fact, the two have gone off to India together to rob the Great Mogul." Madame Firmiani, like the

distinguished woman that she is, saw that she ought not to convert her beautiful lips into a mouthpiece for

Many persons, when they hear of these tragicomedies of life, refuse to believe them. They take the side of

human nature and fine sentiments; they declare that these things do not exist. But Talleyrand said a fine thing,

my dear fellow: "All things happen." Truly, things happen under our very noses which are more amazing than

this domestic plot of yours; but society has an interest in denying them, and in declaring itself calumniated.

Often these dramas are played so naturally and with such a varnish of good taste that even I have to rub the

lens of my operaglass to see to the bottom of them. But, I repeat to you, when a man is a friend of mine,

when we have received together the baptism of champagne and have knelt together before the altar of the

Venus Commodus, when the crooked fingers of play have given us their benediction, if that man finds

You must be aware from all this that I love you. Have I ever in my life written a letter as long as this? No.

Alas! Paul, I shall be forced to take to writing, for I am taking to politics. I am going into public life. I intend

to have, within five years, the portfolio of a ministry or some embassy. There comes an age when the only

mistress a man can serve is his country. I enter the ranks of those who intend to upset not only the ministry,

but the whole present system of government. In short, I swim in the waters of a certain prince who is lame of

the foot only,a man whom I regard as a statesman of genius whose name will go down to posterity; a

Several of us, Ronquerolles, Montriveau, the Grandlieus, La Roche Hugon, Serisy, Feraud, and Granville,

have allied ourselves against the "partipretre," as the partyninny represented by the "Constitutionnel" has

ingeniously said. We intend to overturn the Navarreins, Lenoncourts, Vandenesses, and the Grand Almonry.

In order to succeed we shall even ally ourselves with Lafayette, the Orleanists, and the Left,people whom

we can throttle on the morrow of victory, for no government in the world is possible with their principles. We

Personal questions as to the King's person are mere sentimental folly in these days; they must be 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 Franceat 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

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 thirtyfive years of slumber, my

highlyrespected mother woke up to the recollection that she had a son who might do her honor. Often when

a vinestock 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

fiftyeight, 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 sixandthirty, 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. Butshe is delightfully economical; butshe will adore her

husband, do what he will; butshe 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 Francais; 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.

Butand this to me is truly patheticshe 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 brewhouse 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

steamengines. It eats, it drinks, it walks, it may have children, take good care of them, and bring them up

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

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

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

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 pitchandtoss. I cannot do without you, my friend. Now, then,

my dear Paul, instead of setting sail for India you would do a much wiser thing to navigate with me the

waters of the Seine. Believe me, Paris is still the place where fortune, abundant fortune, can be won. Potosi is

in the rue Vivienne, the rue de la Paix, the Place Vendome, the rue de Rivoli. In all other places and countries

material works and labors, marches and countermarches, and sweatings of the brow are necessary to the

building up of fortune; but in Paris THOUGHT suffices. Here, every man even mentally mediocre, can see a

mine of wealth as he puts on his slippers, or picks his teeth after dinner, in his downsitting and his

uprising. Find me another place on the globe where a good round stupid idea brings in more money, or is

If I reach the top of the ladder, as I shall, am I the man to refuse you a helping hand, an influence, a

signature? We shall want, we young roues, a faithful friend on whom to count, if only to compromise him

and make him a scapegoat, or send him to die like a common soldier to save his general. Government is

impossible without a man of honor at one's side, in whom to confide and with whom we can do and say

Here is what I propose. Let the "BelleAmelie" sail without you; come back here like a thunderbolt; I'll

arrange a duel for you with Vandenesse in which you shall have the first shot, and you can wing him like a

pigeon. In France the husband who shoots his rival becomes at once respectable and respected. No one ever

cavils at him again. Fear, my dear fellow, is a valuable social element, a means of success for those who

lower their eyes before the gaze of no man living. I who care as little to live as to drink a glass of milk, and

who have never felt the emotion of fear, I have remarked the strange effects produced by that sentiment upon

our modern manners. Some men tremble to lose the enjoyments to which they are attached, others dread to

leave a woman. The old adventurous habits of other days when life was flung away like a garment exist no

longer. The bravery of a great many men is nothing more than a clever calculation on the fear of their

adversary. The Poles are the only men in Europe who fight for the pleasure of fighting; they cultivate the art

Now hear me: kill Vandenesse, and your wife trembles, your mother inlaw trembles, the public trembles,

and you recover your position, you prove your grand passion for your wife, you subdue society, you subdue

your wife, you become a hero. Such is France. As for your embarrassments, I hold a hundred thousand francs

for you; you can pay your principal debts, and sell what property you have left with a power of redemption,

for you will soon obtain an office which will enable you by degrees to pay off your creditors. Then, as for

your wife, once enlightened as to her character you can rule her. When you loved her you had no power to

manage her; not loving her, you will have an unconquerable force. I will undertake, myself, to make your

motherinlaw as supple as a glove; for you must recover the use of the hundred and fifty thousand francs a

Therefore, I say, renounce this expatriation which seems to me no better than a pan of charcoal or a pistol to

your head. To go away is to justify all calumnies. The gambler who leaves the table to get his money loses it

when he returns; we must have our gold in our pockets. Let us now, you and I, be two gamblers on the green

baize of politics; between us loans are in order. Therefore take posthorses, come back instantly, and renew

the game. You'll win it with Henri de Marsay for your partner, for Henri de Marsay knows how to will, and

See how we stand politically. My father is in the British ministry; we shall have close relations with Spain

through the Evangelistas, for, as soon as your motherinlaw and I have measured claws she will find there

is nothing to gain by fighting the devil. Montriveau is our lieutenantgeneral; he will certainly be minister of

war before long, and his eloquence will give him great ascendancy in the Chamber. Ronquerolles will be

minister of State and privycouncillor; Martial de la RocheHugon is minister to Germany and peer of

France; Serisy leads the Council of State, to which he is indispensable; Granville holds the magistracy, to

which his sons belong; the Grandlieus stand well at court; Ferraud is the soul of the Gondreville

coterie,low intriguers who are always on the surface of things, I'm sure I don't know why. Thus supported,

what have we to fear? The money question is a mere nothing when this great wheel of fortune rolls for us.

What is a woman?you are not a schoolboy. What is life, my dear fellow, if you let a woman be the whole

of it? A boat you can't command, without a rudder, but not without a magnet, and tossed by every wind that

The great secret of social alchemy, my dear Paul, is to get the most we can out of each age of life through

which we pass; to have and to hold the buds of our spring, the flowers of our summer, the fruits of our

autumn. We amused ourselves once, a few good fellows and I, for a dozen or more years, like mousquetaires,

black, red, and gray; we denied ourselves nothing, not even an occasional filibustering here and there. Now

we are going to shake down the plums which age and experience have ripened. Be one of us; you shall have

As Paul de Manerville ended the reading of this letter, which fell like the blows of a pickaxe on the edifice of

his hopes, his illusions, and his love, the vessel which bore him from France was beyond the Azores. In the

That is the question of fools, of feeble beings, who, seeing nothing, can nothing foresee. Then he cried aloud:

"Henri! Henri!" to his loyal friend. Many a man would have gone mad; Paul went to bed and slept that heavy

sleep which follows immense disasters,the sleep that seized Napoleon after Waterloo.

Manerville, Paul FrancoisJoseph, Comte de The Thirteen The Ball at Sceaux Lost Illusions A Distinguished

Marsay, Henri de The Thirteen The Unconscious Humorists Another Study of Woman The Lily of the Valley

Father Goriot Jealousies of a Country Town Ursule Mirouet Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at

Paris Letters of Two Brides The Ball at Sceaux Modeste Mignon The Secrets of a Princess The Gondreville

Vandenesse, Comte Felix de The Lily of the Valley Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Cesar

Birotteau Letters of Two Brides A Start in Life The Secrets of a Princess Another Study of Woman The