all?"

"Do you not love me?" said Paul, tenderly.

"Come, come, my silly child; do you imagine that a contract is like a
house of cards which you can blow down at will? Dear little ignoramus,
you don't know what trouble we have had to found an entail for the
benefit of your eldest son. Don't cast us back into the discussions from
which we have just escaped."

"Why do you wish to ruin my mother?" said Natalie, looking at Paul.

"Why are you so rich?" he replied, smiling.

"Don't quarrel, my children, you are not yet married," said Madame
Evangelista. "Paul," she continued, "you are not to give either
corbeille, or jewels, or trousseau. Natalie has everything in profusion.
Lay by the money you would otherwise put into wedding presents. I know
nothing more stupidly bourgeois and commonplace than to spend a hundred
thousand francs on a corbeille, when five thousand a year given to a
young woman saves her much anxiety and lasts her lifetime. Besides, the
money for a corbeille is needed to decorate your house in Paris. We
will return to Lanstrac in the spring; for Solonet is to settle my debts
during the winter."

"All is for the best," cried Paul, at the summit of happiness.

"So I shall see Paris!" cried Natalie, in a tone that would justly have
alarmed de Marsay.

"If we decide upon this plan," said Paul, "I'll write to de Marsay and
get him to take a box for me at the Bouffons and also at the Italian
opera."

"You are very kind; I should never have dared to ask for it," said
Natalie. "Marriage is a very agreeable institution if it gives husbands
a talent for divining the wishes of their wives."

"It is nothing else," replied Paul. "But see how late it is; I ought to
go."

"Why leave so soon to-night?" said Madame Evangelista, employing those
coaxing ways to which men are so sensitive.

Though all this passed on the best of terms, and according to the laws
of the most exquisite politeness, the effect of the discussion of
these contending interests had, nevertheless, cast between son and
mother-in-law a seed of distrust and enmity which was liable to sprout
under the first heat of anger, or the warmth of a feeling too harshly
bruised. In most families the settlement of "dots" and the deeds of
gift required by a marriage contract give rise to primitive emotions of
hostility, caused by self-love, by the lesion of certain sentiments, by
regret for the sacrifices made, and by the desire to diminish them. When
di