Part 14 (2/2)
”Then if the house in Bordeaux can be sold for two hundred thousand--”
”Solonet will give more than that; he wants it. He is retiring with a handsome property made by gambling on the Funds. He has sold his practice for three hundred thousand francs, and marries a mulatto woman.
G.o.d knows how she got her money, but they say it amounts to millions. A notary gambling in stocks! a notary marrying a black woman! What an age!
It is said that he speculates for your mother-in-law with her funds.”
”She has greatly improved Lanstrac and taken great pains with its cultivation. She has amply repaid me for the use of it.”
”I shouldn't have thought her capable of that.”
”She is so kind and so devoted; she has always paid Natalie's debts during the three months she spent with us every year in Paris.”
”She could well afford to do so, for she gets her living out of Lanstrac,” said Mathias. ”She! grown economical! what a miracle! I am told she has just bought the domain of Grainrouge between Lanstrac and Gra.s.sol; so that if the Lanstrac avenue were extended to the high-road, you would drive four and a half miles through your own property to reach the house. She paid one hundred thousand francs down for Grainrouge.”
”She is as handsome as ever,” said Paul; ”country life preserves her freshness; I don't mean to go to Lanstrac and bid her good-bye; her heart would bleed for me too much.”
”You would go in vain; she is now in Paris. She probably arrived there as you left.”
”No doubt she had heard of the sale of my property and came to help me.
I have no complaint to make of life, Mathias. I am truly loved,--as much as any man ever could be here below; beloved by two women who outdo each other in devotion; they are even jealous of each other; the daughter blames the mother for loving me too much, and the mother reproaches the daughter for what she calls her dissipations. I may say that this great affection has been my ruin. How could I fail to satisfy even the slightest caprice of a loving wife? Impossible to restrain myself!
Neither could I accept any sacrifice on her part. We might certainly, as you say, live at Lanstrac, save my income, and part with her diamonds, but I would rather go to India and work for a fortune than tear my Natalie from the life she enjoys. So it was I who proposed the separation as to property. Women are angels who ought not to be mixed up in the sordid interests of life.”
Old Mathias listened in doubt and amazement.
”You have no children, I think,” he said.
”Fortunately, none,” replied Paul.
”That is not my idea of marriage,” remarked the old notary, naively. ”A wife ought, in my opinion, to share the good and evil fortunes of her husband. I have heard that young married people who love like lovers, do not want children? Is pleasure the only object of marriage? I say that object should be the joys of family. Moreover, in this case--I am afraid you will think me too much of notary--your marriage contract made it inc.u.mbent upon you to have a son. Yes, monsieur le comte, you ought to have had at once a male heir to consolidate that entail. Why not?
Madame Evangelista was strong and healthy; she had nothing to fear in maternity. You will tell me, perhaps, that these are the old-fas.h.i.+oned notions of our ancestors. But in those n.o.ble families, Monsieur le comte, the legitimate wife thought it her duty to bear children and bring them up n.o.bly; as the d.u.c.h.esse de Sully, the wife of the great Sully, said, a wife is not an instrument of pleasure, but the honor and virtue of her household.”
”You don't know women, my good Mathias,” said Paul. ”In order to be happy we must love them as they want to be loved. Isn't there something brutal in at once depriving a wife of her charms, and spoiling her beauty before she has begun to enjoy it?”
”If you had had children your wife would not have dissipated your fortune; she would have stayed at home and looked after them.”
”If you were right, dear friend,” said Paul, frowning, ”I should be still more unhappy than I am. Do not aggravate my sufferings by preaching to me after my fall. Let me go, without the pang of looking backward to my mistakes.”
The next day Mathias received a bill of exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand francs from de Marsay.
”You see,” said Paul, ”he does not write a word to me. He begins by obliging me. Henri's nature is the most imperfectly perfect, the most illegally beautiful that I know. If you knew with what superiority that man, still young, can rise above sentiments, above self-interests, and judge them, you would be astonished, as I am, to find how much heart he has.”
Mathias tried to battle with Paul's determination, but he found it irrevocable, and it was justified by so many cogent reasons that the old man finally ceased his endeavors to retain his client.
It is seldom that vessels sail promptly at the time appointed, but on this occasion, by a fateful circ.u.mstance for Paul, the wind was fair and the ”Belle-Amelie” sailed on the morrow, as expected. The quay was lined with relations, and friends, and idle persons. Among them were several who had formerly known Manerville. His disaster, posted on the walls of the town, made him as celebrated as he was in the days of his wealth and fas.h.i.+on. Curiosity was aroused; every one had their word to say about him. Old Mathias accompanied his client to the quay, and his sufferings were sore as he caught a few words of those remarks:--
”Who could recognize in that man you see over there, near old Mathias, the dandy who was called the Pink of Fas.h.i.+on five years ago, and made, as they say, 'fair weather and foul' in Bordeaux.”
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