old Camusot married little Daddy Cardot's eldest
daughter, and they had high times together!"

"Well!" Madame Schontz went on, "and Madame Cardot, the notary's wife,
was a Chiffreville--manufacturers of chemical products, the aristocracy
of these days! Potash, I tell you! Still, this is the unpleasant side of
the matter. You will have a terrible mother-in-law, a woman capable of
killing her daughter if she knew--! This Cardot woman is a bigot; she
has lips like two faded narrow pink ribbons.

"A man of the town like you would never pass muster with that woman,
who, in her well-meaning way, will spy out your bachelor life and know
every fact of the past. However, Cardot says he means to exert his
paternal authority. The poor man will be obliged to do the civil to his
wife for some days; a woman made of wood, my dear fellow; Malaga, who
has seen her, calls her a penitential scrubber. Cardot is a man of
forty; he will be mayor of his district, and perhaps be elected deputy.
He is prepared to give in lieu of the hundred thousand francs a nice
little house in the Rue Saint-Lazare, with a forecourt and a garden,
which cost him no more than sixty thousand at the time of the July
overthrow; he would sell, and that would be an opportunity for you to
go and come at the house, to see the daughter, and be civil to the
mother.--And it would give you a look of property in Madame Cardot's
eyes. You would be housed like a prince in that little mansion. Then,
by Camusot's interest, you may get an appointment as librarian to some
public office where there is no library.--Well, and then if you invest
your money in backing up a newspaper, you will get ten thousand francs
a year on it, you can earn six, your librarianship will bring you in
four.--Can you do better for yourself?

"If you were to marry a lamb without spot, it might be a light woman by
the end of two years. What is the damage?--an anticipated dividend! It
is quite the fashion.

"Take my word for it, you can do no better than come to dine with Malaga
to-morrow. You will meet your father-in-law; he will know the secret has
been let out--by Malaga, with whom he cannot be angry--and then you are
master of the situation. As to your wife!--Why her misconduct leaves you
as free as a bachelor----"

"Your language is as blunt as a cannon ball."

"I love you for your own sake, that is all--and I can reason. Well! why
do you stand there like a wax image of Abd-el-Kader? There is no