ted into the wing which united a handsome business
house with the hotel at the back, between courtyard and garden.

On the way from the Rue de Normandie to the Rue de Richelieu, Pons drew
from the abstracted Schmucke the details of the story of the modern
prodigal son, for whom Death had killed the fatted innkeeper. Pons, but
newly reconciled with his nearest relatives, was immediately smitten
with a desire to make a match between Fritz Brunner and Cecile de
Marville. Chance ordained that the notary was none other than Berthier,
old Cardot's son-in-law and successor, the sometime second clerk with
whom Pons had been wont to dine.

"Ah! M. Berthier, you here!" he said, holding out a hand to his host of
former days.

"We have not had the pleasure of seeing you at dinner lately; how is
it?" returned the notary. "My wife has been anxious about you. We saw
you at the first performance of _The Devil's Betrothed_, and our anxiety
became curiosity?"

"Old folk are sensitive," replied the worthy musician; "they make the
mistake of being a century behind the times, but how can it be helped?
It is quite enough to represent one century--they cannot entirely belong
to the century which sees them die."

"Ah!" said the notary, with a shrewd look, "one cannot run two centuries
at once."

"By the by," continued Pons, drawing the young lawyer into a corner,
"why do you not find some one for my cousin Cecile de Marville--"

"Ah! why--?" answered Berthier. "In this century, when luxury has
filtered down to our very porters' lodges, a young fellow hesitates
before uniting his lot with the daughter of a President of the Court of
Appeal in Paris if she brings him only a hundred thousand francs. In the
rank of life in which Mlle. de Marville's husband would take, the wife
was never yet known that did not cost her husband three thousand francs
a year; the interest on a hundred thousand francs would scarcely
find her in pin-money. A bachelor with an income of fifteen or twenty
thousand francs can live on an entre-sol; he is not expected to cut
any figure; he need not keep more than one servant, and all his surplus
income he can spend on his amusements; he puts himself in the hands of
a good tailor, and need not trouble any further about keeping up
appearances. Far-sighted mothers make much of him; he is one of the
kings of fashion in Paris.

"But a wife changes everything. A wife means a properly furnished
house," continued the lawyer;