ittle more than a doubtful million. You are listening to
such stuff with the rapture of a lover, and you think that old Mathias,
who is not in love, can forget arithmetic, and will not point out the
difference between landed estate, the actual value of which is enormous
and constantly increasing, and the revenues of personal property, the
capital of which is subject to fluctuations and diminishment of income.
I am old enough to have learned that money dwindles and land augments.
You have called me in, Monsieur le comte, to stipulate for your
interests; either let me defend those interests, or dismiss me."

"If monsieur is seeking a fortune equal in capital to his own," said
Solonet, "we certainly cannot give it to him. We do not possess three
millions and a half; nothing can be more evident. While you can boast
of your three overwhelming millions, we can only produce our poor one
million,--a mere nothing in your eyes, though three times the dowry of
an archduchess of Austria. Bonaparte received only two hundred and fifty
thousand francs with Maria-Louisa."

"Maria-Louisa was the ruin of Bonaparte," muttered Mathias.

Natalie's mother caught the words.

"If my sacrifices are worth nothing," she cried, "I do not choose to
continue such a discussion; I trust to the discretion of Monsieur le
comte, and I renounce the honor of his hand for my daughter."

According to the strategy marked out by the younger notary, this battle
of contending interests had now reached the point where victory was
certain for Madame Evangelista. The mother-in-law had opened her heart,
delivered up her property, and was therefore practically released as her
daughter's guardian. The future husband, under pain of ignoring the laws
of generous propriety and being false to love, ought now to accept these
conditions previously planned, and cleverly led up to by Solonet and
Madame Evangelista. Like the hands of a clock turned by mechanism, Paul
came faithfully up to time.

"Madame!" he exclaimed, "is it possible you can think of breaking off
the marriage?"

"Monsieur," she replied, "to whom am I accountable? To my daughter. When
she is twenty-one years of age she will receive my guardianship account
and release me. She will then possess a million, and can, if she likes,
choose her husband among the sons of the peers of France. She is a
daughter of the Casa-Reale."

"Madame is right," remarked Solonet. "Why should she be more hardly
pushed to-day