“Questa coda non è di quetso gatto!” (this tail does not fit that cat) exclaimed Madame Evangelista, looking at her sponser Solonet, and pointing to Maître Mathias.
“There is something behind all this,” said Solonet in an undertone.
“And what is all this muddle for?” Paul asked of Mathias, going with him into the adjoining room.
“To save you from ruin,” said the old notary in a whisper. “You are quite bent on marrying a girl—and her mother—who have made away with two millions of francs in seven years; you are accepting a debt of more than a hundred thousand francs to your children, to whom you will some day have to hand over eleven hundred and fifty-six thousand francs on their mother’s behalf, when you are receiving hardly a million. You run the risk of seeing your whole fortune melt away in five years, leaving you as bare as St. John the Baptist, while you will remain the debtor in enormous sums to your wife and her representatives.—If you choose to embark in that boat, go on, Monsieur le Comte; but at least allow your old friend to save the house of Manerville.”
“But how will this save it?” asked Paul.
“Listen, Monsieur le Comte; you are very much in love?”
“Yes,” replied Paul.
“A man in love is about as secret as a cannon shot; I will tell you nothing!—If you were to repeat things, your marriage might come to nothing, so I place your love under the protection of my silence. You trust to my fidelity?”
“What a question!”
“Well, then, let me tell you that Madame Evangelista, her notary, and her daughter were playing a trick on us all through, and are more than clever. By Heaven, what sharp practice!”
“Natalie?” cried Paul.
“Well, I will not swear to that,” said the old man. “You want her—take her! But I wish this marriage might fall through without the smallest blame to you!”
“Why?”
“That girl would beggar Peru. … Besides, she rides like a circus-rider; she is what you may call emancipated. Women of that sort make bad wives.”
Paul pressed his old friend’s hand and replied with a little fatuous smile.
“Don’t be alarmed.—And for the moment, what must I do?”
“Stand firm to these conditions; they will consent, for the bargain does not damage their interests. And besides, all Madame Evangelista wants is to get her daughter married; I have seen her hand; do not trust her.”
Paul returned to the drawing-room, where he found the widow talking in low tones to Solonet, just as he had been talking to Mathias. Natalie, left out of this mysterious conference, was playing with a screen. Somewhat out of countenance, she was wondering, “What absurdity keeps me from all knowledge of my own concerns?”
The younger lawyer was talking in the general outlines and remote effects of a stipulation based on the personal pride of the parties concerned, into which his client had blindly rushed. But though Mathias was now nothing else but a notary, Solonet was still to some degree a man, and carried some juvenile conceit into his dealings. It often happens that personal vanity makes a young lawyer forgetful of his client’s interests. Under these circumstances, Maître Solonet, who would not allow the widow to think that Nestor was beating Achilles, was advising her to conclude the matter at once on these lines. Little did he care for the ultimate fulfilment of the contract; to him victory meant the release of Madame Evangelista with an assured income, and the marriage of Natalie.
“All Bordeaux will know that you have settled about eleven hundred thousand francs on your daughter, and that you still have twenty-five thousand francs a year,” said Solonet in the lady’s ear. “I had not hoped for such a brilliant result.”
“But,” said she, “explain to me why the creation of an entail should so immediately have stilled the storm.”
“Distrust of you and your daughter. An entailed estate is inalienable: neither husband nor wife can touch it.”
“That is a positive insult.”
“Oh, no. We call that foresight. The good man caught you in a snare. If you refuse the entail, he will say, Then you want to squander my client’s fortune’; whereas, if he creates an entail, it is out of all risk, just as if the couple were married under the provisions of the trust.”
Solonet silenced his own scruples by reflecting:
“These stipulations will only take effect in the remote future, and by that time Madame Evangelista will be dead and buried.”
She, for her part, was satisfied with Solonet’s explanation; she had entire confidence in him. She was perfectly ignorant of the law; she saw her daughter married, and that was all she asked for the nonce; she was delighted at their success. And so, as Mathias suspected, neither Solonet nor Madame Evangelista as yet understood the full extent of his plan, which had incontrovertible reasons to support it.
“Well, then, Monsieur Mathias,” said the widow, “everything is satisfactory.”
“Madame, if you and Monsieur le Comte agree to these conditions, you should exchange pledges.—It is fully understood by you both, it is not,”
