Parisian Points of View | Page 8

pay the bills without a tremor, for he will be charmed to see me very stylish and very much admired. Ah, we shall make the most brilliant and most giddy little couple! He is modern, I shall be modern, we shall be modern! After three, four, or five weeks (we do not know exactly) dedicated to pure love, we shall take flight towards the country, where one has a good time; and then we shall be talked about, Aunt Louise, we shall be talked about. And now, where was I in my story? I am sure I do not know at all."
"Nor I."
"Nor I."
"Ah, I know. Mme. de Courtalin had come to ask my hand for her honorable son, and when mamma had spoken to me of that I had exclaimed, 'Sooner the convent!' I do not know exactly what mamma said to Mme. de Courtalin--at any rate, I was left alone for the time being. There was a rush to the Grand Prix, and then a general breaking-up. We went to spend a month at Aix-les-Bains for papa's complaint, and then a fortnight here, Aunt Louise; and then, do you remember, you received the confessions of my poor torn heart. Ah! I must say you are the only young member of the family--you were the only one who did not make a long face when I spoke of my love for that rogue. Mamma, however, had preached to you, and you vaunted the advantages of an alliance with Courtalin, but without conviction. I felt that you were at bottom on my side against mamma, and it was so easily explained--mamma could not understand me, whereas you! They think we little girls know nothing, and we know everything. I knew that mamma had made a worldly marriage, which had, however, turned out very well; and you, Aunt Louise, had married for love. You must have battled to get the husband you wished, and you had him, and you resolutely conquered your happiness. Yes, I knew all that; I dared even to allude to those things of the past, and those memories brought a smile to your lips and tears to your eyes. And to-day again, Aunt Louise, there it is, the smile, and there are the tears."
Marceline interrupted her talk, affectionately threw herself on her Aunt Louise's neck, and kissed her with all her heart. She wiped away the tears with kisses, and only the smile remained. Yes, Aunt Louise remembered that she had had hard work to get as husband a certain handsome officer of the Royal Guard, who was there present at the scene, in an old decorated frame, standing up with his helmet on his head in a martial attitude, leaning on the hilt of his cavalry sabre.
He, too, had been modern, that conqueror of the Trocadero, when he entered Madrid in 1822 on the staff of the Duke of Angoulême. And she, too, old Aunt Louise, had been modern, very modern, the day when, from a window of the Palace of the Tuileries, during a military parade, she had murmured this phrase in her mother's ear: "Mamma, there is the one I love."
"Ah, how cowardly we are!" exclaimed Marceline, abruptly, changing her tone. "Yes, how cowardly we are to love them--those, those dreadful men, who know so little how to care for us. I say that for Gontran. What was he doing while I was telling you my sorrows, Aunt Louise? Quite calmly taking a trip around the world. But let him speak now, let him speak, especially as I cannot any more. In all my life I have never made so long a speech. Speak, sir; why were you going round the world?"
"Because your mother, on the morning of the day before you departed for Aix-les-Bains, had had a very long conversation with me."
"And she had said to you?"
"She had said to me, 'Put a stop to this; marry her or go away, and let her not hear of you again till her marriage.' And as I had for some time been debating whether to take a little trip to Japan, I started for Japan."
"He started for Japan! That goes without saying. You hear him, Aunt Louise; he admits that this time last year he preferred to expatriate himself rather than marry me. So there he was in America, in China, and in Japan. This lasted ten months; from time to time, humbly and timidly, I asked for news of him. He was very well; his last letter was from Shanghai, or Sidney, or Java. For me, not a word, not a remembrance--nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing!"
"I had promised your mother. One day at Yokohama I had bought you a lot of fascinating little things. The box was done up and addressed to you when I