my old Paul," said de Marsay, after a
moment's silence, "and I say to you: settle down into a worthy father
and husband and you'll be ridiculous for the rest of your days. If you
could be happy and ridiculous, the thing might be thought of; but
you will not be happy. You haven't a strong enough wrist to drive a
household. I'll do you justice and say you are a perfect horseman; no
one knows as well as you how to pick up or thrown down the reins, and
make a horse prance, and sit firm to the saddle. But, my dear fellow,
marriage is another thing. I see you now, led along at a slapping
pace by Madame la Comtesse de Manerville, going whither you would not,
oftener at a gallop than a trot, and presently unhorsed!--yes, unhorsed
into a ditch and your legs broken. Listen to me. You still have some
forty-odd thousand francs a year from your property in the Gironde.
Good. Take your horses and servants and furnish your house in Bordeaux;
you can be king of Bordeaux, you can promulgate there the edicts that
we put forth in Paris; you can be the correspondent of our stupidities.
Very good. Play the rake in the provinces; better still, commit follies;
follies may win you celebrity. But--don't marry. Who marries now-a-days?
Only merchants, for the sake of their capital, or to be two to drag the
cart; only peasants who want to produce children to work for them; only
brokers and notaries who want a wife's 'dot' to pay for their practice;
only miserable kings who are forced to continue their miserable
dynasties. But we are exempt from the pack, and you want to shoulder it!
And why DO you want to marry? You ought to give your best friend
your reasons. In the first place, if you marry an heiress as rich as
yourself, eighty thousand francs a year for two is not the same thing as
forty thousand francs a year for one, because the two are soon three or
four when the children come. You haven't surely any love for that silly
race of Manerville which would only hamper you? Are you ignorant of what
a father and mother have to be? Marriage, my old Paul, is the silliest
of all the social immolations; our children alone profit by it, and
don't know its price until their horses are nibbling the flowers on our
grave. Do you regret your father, that old tyrant who made your first
years wretched? How can you be sure that your children will love you?
The very care you take of their education, your precautions for their
happiness, your necessary sternness wi