“Be silent, dear child,” said her mother, her eyes filling with tears; “my ignorance of business requires far more than that.”
“What?”
“I must sell this house to pay you what I owe you.”
“What can you owe to me,” said the girl—“to me, who owe my life to you? Can I ever repay you, on the contrary? If my marriage is to cost you the smallest sacrifice, I will never marry!”
“You are but a child!”
“My dear Natalie,” said Paul, “you must understand that it is neither I, nor you, nor your mother who insists on these sacrifices, but the children—”
“But if I do not marry,” she interrupted.
“Then you do not love me?” said Paul.
“Come, silly child,” said her mother; “do you suppose that a marriage contract is a house of cards to be blown down at your pleasure? Poor ignorant darling, you do not know what trouble we have been at to create an entailed estate for your eldest son. Do not throw us back into the troubles we have escaped from.”
“But why ruin my mother?” said Natalie to Paul.
“Why are you so rich?” he said, with a smile.
“Do not discuss the matter too far, my children; you are not married yet,” said Madame Evangelista. “Paul,” she went on, “Natalie needs no wedding gifts, no jewels, no trousseau; she has everything in profusion. Save the money you would have spent in presents to secure to yourselves some permanent home luxuries. There is nothing to my mind so foolishly vulgar as the expenditure of a hundred thousand francs in a corbeille* of which nothing is left at last but an old white satin-covered trunk. Five thousand francs a year, on the other hand, as pin-money, save a young wife many small cares, and are hers for life. And indeed you will want the money of the corbeille to refurnish your house in Paris this winter. We will come back to Lanstrac in the spring; Solonet will have settled all our affairs in the course of the winter.”
“Then all is well,” said Paul, at the height of happiness.
“And I shall see Paris!” cried Natalie, in a tone that might indeed have alarmed a de Marsay.
“If that is quite settled, I will write to de Marsay to secure a box for the winter season at the Italian opera.”
“You are most nice! I dared not ask it of you,” said Natalie. “Marriage is a delightful institution if it gives husbands the power of guessing their wives’ wishes.”
* The bridegroom’s presents of lace, jewels, and apparel constitute the corbeille.
“That is precisely what it is,” said Paul. “But it is midnight—I must go.”
“Why so early this evening?” said Madame Evangelista, who was lavish of the attentions to which men are so keenly alive.
Though the whole business had been conducted on terms of the most refined politeness, the effect of this clashing of interests had sown a germ of distrust and hostility between the lady and her son-in-law, ready to develop at the first spark of anger, or under the heat of a too strong display of feeling.
In most families the question of settlements and allowances under the marriage contract is prone to give rise to these primitive conflicts, stirred up by wounded pride or injured feelings, by some reluctance to make any sacrifice, or the desire to minimize it. When a difficulty arises, must there not be a conqueror and a conquered? The parents of the plighted couple try to bring the affair to a happy issue; in their eyes it is a purely commercial transaction, allowing all the tricks, the profits, and the deceptions of trade. As a rule, the husband only is initiated into the secret of the transaction, and the young wife remains, as did Natalie, ignorant of the stipulations which make her rich or poor.
Paul, as he went home, reflected that, thanks to his lawyer’s ingenuity, his fortune was almost certainly secured against ruin. If Madame Evangelista lived with her daughter, the household would have more than a hundred thousand francs a year for ordinary expenses. Thus his hopes of a happy life would be realized.
“My mother-in-law seems to me a very good sort of woman,” he reflected, still under the influence of the wheedling ways by which Madame Evangelista had succeeded in dissipating the clouds raised by the discussion. “Mathias is mistaken. These lawyers are strange beings; they poison everything. The mischief was made by that contentious little Solonet, who wanted to be clever.”
While Paul, as he went to bed, was recapitulating the advantages he had won in the course of the evening, Madame Evangelista was no less confident of having gained the victory.
“Well, darling mother, are you satisfied?” said Natalie, following her mother into her bedroom.
“Yes, my love, everything has succeeded as I wished, and I feel a weight taken off my shoulders, which crushed me this morning. Paul is really an excellent fellow. Dear boy! Yes, we can certainly give him a delightful life. You will make him happy, and I will take care of his political prospects. The Spanish ambassador is an old friend of mine. I will renew my acquaintance with him and with several other persons. We shall soon be in the heart of politics, and all will be well with us. The pleasure for you, dear children; for me the later occupations of life—the game of ambition.
“Do not be alarmed at my selling this house; do you suppose we should ever return to Bordeaux? To Lanstrac—yes. But we shall spend every winter in Paris, where our true interests now lie.—Well, Natalie, was what I asked you so difficult to do?”
“My dear mother, I was ashamed at moments.”
“Solonet advises me to buy an annuity with the price of the house,” said Madame Evangelista, “but I must make some other arrangement. I will not deprive you of one sou of my capital.”
“You were all very angry, I saw,” said Natalie. “How was the storm appeased?”
“By the offer
