aughters; he dotes on them, so to
speak, though they will scarcely acknowledge him."

"Didn't the second daughter marry a banker with a German name?" the
Vicomtesse asked, turning to Mme. de Langeais, "a Baron de Nucingen? And
her name is Delphine, is it not? Isn't she a fair-haired woman who has
a side-box at the Opera? She comes sometimes to the Bouffons, and laughs
loudly to attract attention."

The Duchess smiled and said:

"I wonder at you, dear. Why do you take so much interest in people of
that kind? One must have been as madly in love as Restaud was, to be
infatuated with Mlle. Anastasie and her flour sacks. Oh! he will not
find her a good bargain! She is in M. de Trailles' hands, and he will
ruin her."

"And they do not acknowledge their father!" Eugene repeated.

"Oh! well, yes, their father, the father, a father," replied the
Vicomtesse, "a kind father who gave them each five or six hundred
thousand francs, it is said, to secure their happiness by marrying
them well; while he only kept eight or ten thousand livres a year for
himself, thinking that his daughters would always be his daughters,
thinking that in them he would live his life twice over again, that
in their houses he should find two homes, where he would be loved
and looked up to, and made much of. And in two years' time both his
sons-in-law had turned him out of their houses as if he were one of the
lowest outcasts."

Tears came into Eugene's eyes. He was still under the spell of youthful
beliefs, he had just left home, pure and sacred feelings had been
stirred within him, and this was his first day on the battlefield of
civilization in Paris. Genuine feeling is so infectious that for a
moment the three looked at each other in silence.

"_Eh, mon Dieu!_" said Mme. de Langeais; "yes, it seems very horrible,
and yet we see such things every day. Is there not a reason for it?
Tell me, dear, have you ever really thought what a son-in-law is? A
son-in-law is the man for whom we bring up, you and I, a dear little
one, bound to us very closely in innumerable ways; for seventeen years
she will be the joy of her family, its 'white soul,' as Lamartine says,
and suddenly she will become its scourge. When HE comes and takes her
from us, his love from the very beginning is like an axe laid to the
root of all the old affection in our darling's heart, and all the ties
that bound her to her family are severed. But yesterday our little
daughter thought of