The Marriage Contract

The Marriage Contract

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Marriage Contract, by Honore de
Balzac This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
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Title: The Marriage Contract
Author: Honore de Balzac
Release Date: March 12, 2005 [EBook #1556]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
MARRIAGE CONTRACT ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Rossini.

THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT


CHAPTER I
PRO AND CON
Monsieur de Manerville, the father, was a worthy Norman gentleman,
well known to the Marechael de Richelieu, who married him to one of
the richest heiresses of Bordeaux in the days when the old duke reigned
in Guienne as governor. The Norman then sold the estate he owned in
Bessin, and became a Gascon, allured by the beauty of the chateau de
Lanstrac, a delightful residence owned by his wife. During the last days
of the reign of Louis XV., he bought the post of major of the Gate
Guards, and lived till 1813, having by great good luck escaped the
dangers of the Revolution in the following manner.
Toward the close of the year, 1790, he went to Martinque, where his
wife had interests, leaving the management of his property in Gascogne
to an honest man, a notary's clerk, named Mathias, who was inclined to
--or at any rate did--give into the new ideas. On his return the Comte de
Manerville found his possessions intact and well-managed. This sound
result was the fruit produced by grafting the Gascon on the Norman.
Madame de Manerville died in 1810. Having learned the importance of
worldly goods through the dissipations of his youth, and, giving them,
like many another old man, a higher place than they really hold in life,
Monsieur de Manerville became increasingly economical, miserly, and
sordid. Without reflecting that the avarice of parents prepares the way
for the prodigalities of children, he allowed almost nothing to his son,
although that son was an only child.
Paul de Manerville, coming home from the college of Vendome in
1810, lived under close paternal discipline for three years. The tyranny
by which the old man of seventy oppressed his heir influenced,
necessarily, a heart and a character which were not yet formed. Paul,
the son, without lacking the physical courage which is vital in the air of

Gascony, dared not struggle against his father, and consequently lost
that faculty of resistance which begets moral courage. His thwarted
feelings were driven to the depths of his heart, where they remained
without expression; later, when he felt them to be out of harmony with
the maxims of the world, he could only think rightly and act mistakenly.
He was capable of fighting for a mere word or look, yet he trembled at
the thought of dismissing a servant,--his timidity showing itself in those
contests only which required a persistent will. Capable of doing great
things to fly from persecution, he would never have prevented it by
systematic opposition, nor have faced it with the steady employment of
force of will. Timid in thought, bold in actions, he long preserved that
inward simplicity which makes a man the dupe and the voluntary
victim of things against which certain souls hesitate to revolt,
preferring to endure them rather than complain. He was, in point of fact,
imprisoned by his father's old mansion, for he had not enough money to
consort with young men; he envied their pleasures while unable to
share them.
The old gentleman took him every evening, in an old carriage drawn by
ill-harnessed old horses, attended by ill-dressed old servants, to royalist
houses, where he met a society composed of the relics of the
parliamentary nobility and the martial nobility. These two nobilities
coalescing after the Revolution, had now transformed themselves into a
landed aristocracy. Crushed by the vast and swelling fortunes of the
maritime cities, this Faubourg Saint-Germain of Bordeaux responded
by lofty disdain to the sumptuous displays of commerce, government
administrations, and the military. Too young to understand social
distinctions and the necessities underlying the apparent assumption
which they create, Paul was bored to death among these ancients,
unaware that the connections of his youth would eventually secure to
him that aristocratic pre-eminence which Frenchmen will forever
desire.
He found some slight compensations for the dulness of these evenings
in certain manual exercises which always delight young men, and
which his father enjoined upon him. The old gentleman considered that
to know the art of fencing