“If monsieur looks for a fortune of which the capital is a match for his own,” said Solonet, “we have nothing like three millions and a half; that is self-evident. If you can show these overpowering millions, we have but our one poor little million to offer—a mere trifle! three times as much as the dower of an Archduchess of Austria. Bonaparte received two hundred and fifty thousand francs when he married Marie Louise.”
“Marie Louise ruined Napoleon,” said Maître Mathias in a growl.
Natalie’s mother understood the bearing of this speech.
“If my sacrifices are in vain,” she exclaimed, “I decline to carry such a discussion any further; I trust to the Count’s discretion, and renounce the honor of his proposals for my daughter.”
After the manoeuvres planned by the young notary this battle of conflicting interests had reached the point where the victory ought to have rested with Madame Evangelista. The mother-in-law had opened her heart, abandoned her possessions, and was almost released. The intending husband was bound to accept the conditions laid down beforehand by the collusion of Maître Solonet and his client, or sin against every law of generosity, and be false to his love.
Like the hand of the clock moved by the works, Paul came duly to the point.
“What, madame,” cried he, “you could undo in one moment—”
“Why, monsieur, to whom do I owe my duty? To my daughter.—When she is one-and-twenty she will pass my accounts and release me. She will have a million francs, and can, if she pleases, choose among the sons of the peers of France. Is she not the daughter of a Casa-Real?”
“Madame is quite justified. Why should she be worse off today than she will be fourteen months hence? Do not rob her of the benefits of her position,” said Solonet.
“Mathias,” said Paul, with deep grief, “there are two ways of being ruined—and at this moment you have undone me!”
He went towards the old lawyer, no doubt intending to order that the contract should be at once drawn up. Mathias forefended this disaster by a glance which seemed to say, “Wait!” He saw tears in Paul’s eyes—tears of shame at the tenor of this debate, and at the peremptory tone in which Madame Evangelista had thrown him over—and he checked them by a start, the start of Archimedes crying Eureka!
The words “Peer of France” had flashed light on his mind like a torch in a cavern.
At this instant Natalie reappeared, as lovely as the dawn, and said with an innocent air:
“Am I in the way?”
“Strangely in the way, my child!” replied her mother, with cruel bitterness.
“Come, dear Natalie,” said Paul, taking her hand and leading her to a chair by the fire, “everything is settled!” for he could not endure to think that his hopes were overthrown.
And Mathias eagerly put in:
“Yes, everything can yet be settled.”
Like a general who in one move baffles the tactics of the enemy, the old lawyer had had a vision of the Genius that watches over notaries, unfolding before him in legal script a conception that might save the future prospects of Paul and of his children. Maître Solonet knew of no other issue from these irreconcilable difficulties than the determination to which the young Count had been led by love, and by this storm of contending feelings and interests; so he was excessively surprised by his senior’s remark.
Curious to know what remedy Maître Mathias had to suggest for a state of things which must have seemed to him past all hope, he asked him:
“What have you to propose!”
“Natalie, my dear child, leave us,” said Madame Evangelista.
“Mademoiselle is not de trop,” replied Maître Mathias, with a smile. “I speak as much for her as for Monsieur le Comte.”
There was a solemn silence, each one in great excitement awaiting the old man’s speech with the utmost curiosity.
“In our day,” Mathias went on after a pause, “the notary’s profession has changed in many ways. In our day political revolutions affect the future prospects of families, and this used not to be the case. Formerly life ran in fixed grooves, ranks were clearly defined—”
“We are not here to listen to a lecture on political economy, but to arrange a marriage contract,” said Solonet, with flippant impatience, and interrupting the old man.
“I beg you to allow me to speak in my turn,” said Mathias.
Solonet took his seat on the ottoman, saying to Madame Evangelista in an undertone:
“Now you will learn what we lawyers mean by rigmarole.”
“Notaries are consequently obliged to watch the course of politics, since they now are intimately concerned with private affairs. To give you an instance: Formerly noble families had inalienable fortunes, but the Revolution overthrew them; the present system tends to reconstructing such fortunes,” said the old man, indulging somewhat in the twaddle of the tabellionaris boa constrictor. “Now, Monsieur le Comte, in virtue of his name, his talents, and his wealth, is evidently destined to sit some day in the lower Chamber; destiny may perhaps lead him to the upper and hereditary Chamber; and as we know, he has every qualification that may justify our prognostics.—Are you not of my opinion, madame?” said he to the widow.
“You have anticipated my dearest hope,” said she. “Manerville must be a Peer of France, or I shall die of grief.”
“All that may tend to that end—?” said Maître Mathias, appealing to the mother-in-law with a look of frank good humor.
“Answers to my dearest wish,” she put in.
“Well, then,” said Mathias, “is not this marriage a fitting opportunity for creating an entail? Such a foundation will most certainly
