sealed covers, to come and vote on the articles of our marriage contract?”

A torrent of epigrams was poured out on Bordeaux.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madame Evangelista,

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