The Marriage Contract | Page 8

of Fashion and the Queen of
Balls met in presence of the highest society of the town of Bordeaux.
The two flowers looked at each other with apparent coldness, and
mutually thought each other charming. Interested in watching the
effects of the meeting, Madame Evangelista divined in the expression
of Paul's eyes the feelings within him, and she muttered to herself, "He
will be my son-in-law." Paul, on the other hand, said to himself, as he
looked at Natalie, "She will be my wife."
The wealth of the Evangelistas, proverbial in Bordeaux, had remained
in Paul's mind as a memory of his childhood. Thus the pecuniary
conditions were known to him from the start, without necessitating
those discussions and inquiries which are as repugnant to a timid mind
as to a proud one. When some persons attempting to say to Paul a few
flattering phrases as to Natalie's manner, language, and beauty, ending
by remarks, cruelly calculated to deter him, on the lavish extravagance
of the Evangelistas, the Pink of Fashion replied with a disdain that was
well-deserved by such provincial pettiness. This method of receiving
such speeches soon silenced them; for he now set the tone to the ideas
and language as well as to the manners of those about him. He had
imported from his travels a certain development of the Britannic
personality with its icy barriers, also a tone of Byronic pessimism as to
life, together with English plate, boot-polish, ponies, yellow gloves,
cigars, and the habit of galloping.

It thus happened that Paul escaped the discouragements hitherto
presented to marriageable men by dowagers and young girls. Madame
Evangelista began by asking him to formal dinners on various
occasions. The Pink of Fashion would not, of course, miss festivities to
which none but the most distinguished young men of the town were
bidden. In spite of the coldness that Paul assumed, which deceived
neither mother nor daughter, he was drawn, step by step, into the path
of marriage. Sometimes as he passed in his tilbury, or rode by on his
fine English horse, he heard the young men of his acquaintance say to
one another:--
"There's a lucky man. He is rich and handsome, and is to marry, so they
say, Mademoiselle Evangelista. There are some men for whom the
world seems made."
When he met the Evangelistas he felt proud of the particular distinction
which mother and daughter imparted to their bows. If Paul had not
secretly, within his heart, fallen in love with Mademoiselle Natalie,
society would certainly have married him to her in spite of himself.
Society, which never causes good, is the accomplice of much evil; then
when it beholds the evil it has hatched maternally, it rejects and
revenges it. Society in Bordeaux, attributing a "dot" of a million to
Mademoiselle Evangelista, bestowed it upon Paul without awaiting the
consent of either party. Their fortunes, so it was said, agreed as well as
their persons. Paul had the same habits of luxury and elegance in the
midst of which Natalie had been brought up. He had just arranged for
himself a house such as no other man in Bordeaux could have offered
her. Accustomed to Parisian expenses and the caprices of Parisian
women, he alone was fitted to meet the pecuniary difficulties which
were likely to follow this marriage with a girl who was as much of a
Creole and a great lady as her mother. Where they themselves,
remarked the marriageable men, would have been ruined, the Comte de
Manerville, rich as he was, could evade disaster. In short, the marriage
was made. Persons in the highest royalist circles said a few engaging
words to Paul which flattered his vanity:--
"Every one gives you Mademoiselle Evangelista. If you marry her you

will do well. You could not find, even in Paris, a more delightful girl.
She is beautiful, graceful, elegant, and takes after the Casa-Reales
through her mother. You will make a charming couple; you have the
same tastes, the same desires in life, and you will certainly have the
most agreeable house in Bordeaux. Your wife need only bring her
night-cap; all is ready for her. You are fortunate indeed in such a
mother-in-law. A woman of intelligence, and very adroit, she will be a
great help to you in public life, to which you ought to aspire. Besides,
she has sacrificed everything to her daughter, whom she adores, and
Natalie will, no doubt, prove a good wife, for she loves her mother.
You must soon bring the matter to a conclusion."
"That is all very well," replied Paul, who, in spite of his love, was
desirous of keeping his freedom of action, "but I must be sure that the
conclusion shall be a happy one."
He now went frequently to Madame