In spite of himself an exclamation broke from the man of social ambitions when his eyes fell on the discharge and receipts. The president smiled.
“We can each announce our marriage,” said he.
“Oh! you are to marry Eugénie, are you? Well, I am glad to hear of it; she is a kindhearted girl. Why!” struck with a sudden luminous idea, “she must be rich?”
“Four days ago she had about nineteen millions,” the president said, with a malicious twinkle in his eyes; “today she has only seventeen.”
Charles was dumbfounded; he stared at the president.
“Seventeen mil—”
“Seventeen millions. Yes, sir; when we are married, Mlle. Grandet and I shall muster seven hundred and fifty thousand livres a year between us.”
“My dear cousin,” said Charles, with some return of assurance, “we shall be able to push each other’s fortunes.”
“Certainly,” said the president. “There is something else here,” he added, “a little case that I was to give only into your hands,” and he set down a box containing the dressing-case upon the table.
The door opened, and in came Mme. la Marquise d’Aubrion; the great lady seemed to be unaware of Cruchot’s existence. “Look here! dear,” she said, “never mind what that absurd M. d’Aubrion has been saying to you; the Duchesse de Chaulieu has quite turned his head. I repeat it, there is nothing to prevent your marriage—”
“Nothing, madame,” answered Charles. “The three millions which my father owed were paid yesterday.”
“In money?” she asked.
“In full, capital and interest; I mean to rehabilitate his memory.”
“What nonsense!” cried his mother-in-law. “Who is this person?” she asked in Charles’ ear, as she saw Cruchot for the first time.
“My man of business,” he answered in a low voice. The Marquise gave M. de Bonfons a disdainful bow, and left the room.
“We are beginning to push each other’s fortunes already,” said the president drily, as he took up his hat. “Good day, cousin.”
“The old cockatoo from Saumur is laughing at me; I have a great mind to make him swallow six inches of cold steel,” thought Charles.
But the president had departed.
Three days later M. de Bonfons was back in Saumur again, and announced his marriage with Eugénie. After about six months he received his appointment as Councillor to the Court-Royal at Angers, and they went thither. But before Eugénie left Saumur she melted down the trinkets that had long been so sacred and so dear a trust, and gave them, together with the eight thousand francs which her cousin had returned to her, to make a reredos for the altar in the parish church whither she had gone so often to pray to God for him. Henceforward her life was spent partly at Angers, partly at Saumur. Her husband’s devotion to the government at a political crisis was rewarded; he was made President of the Chamber, and finally First President. Then he awaited a general election with impatience; he had visions of a place in the government; he had dreams of a peerage; and then, and then …
“Then he would call cousins with the king, I suppose?” said Nanon, big Nanon, Mme. Cornoiller, wife of a burgess of Saumur, when her mistress told her of these lofty ambitions and high destinies.
Yet, after all, none of these ambitious dreams were to be realized, and the name of M. de Bonfons (he had finally dropped the patronymic Cruchot) was to undergo no further transformation. He died only eight days after his appointment as deputy of Saumur. God, who sees all hearts, and who never strikes without cause, punished him, doubtless, for his presumptuous schemes, and for the lawyer’s cunning with which, accurante Cruchot, he had drafted his own marriage contract; in which husband and wife, in case there was no issue of the marriage, bequeathed to each other all their property, both real estate and personalty, without exception or reservation, dispensing even with the formality of an inventory, provided that the omission of the said inventory should not injure their heirs and assigns, it being understood that this deed of gift, etc., etc.
, a clause which may throw some light on the profound respect which the president constantly showed for his wife’s desire to live apart. Women cited M. le Premier Président as one of the most delicately considerate of men, and pitied him, and often went so far as to blame Eugénie for clinging to her passion and her sorrow; mingling, according to their wont, cruel insinuations with their criticisms of the president’s wife.
“If Mme. de Bonfons lives apart from her husband, she must be in very bad health, poor thing. Is she likely to recover? What can be the matter with her? Is it cancer or gastritis, or what is it? Why does she not go to Paris and see some specialist? She has looked very sallow for a long time past. How can she not wish to have a child? They say she is very fond of her husband; why not give him an heir in his position? Do you know, it is really dreadful! If it is only some notion which she has taken into her head, it is unpardonable. Poor president!”
There is a certain keen insight and quick apprehensiveness that is the gift of a lonely and meditative life—and loneliness, and sorrow, and the discipline of the last few years had given Eugénie this clairvoyance of the narrow lot. She knew within herself that the president was anxious for her death that be might be the sole possessor of the colossal fortune, now still further increased by the deaths of the abbé and the notary, whom Providence had lately seen fit to promote from works to rewards. The poor solitary woman understood and pitied the president. Unworthy hopes and selfish calculations were his strongest motives for respecting Eugénie’s hopeless passion. To give life to a child would be death to the egotistical dreams and ambitions that the president hugged within himself; was it for all these things that
