d rather go to India and work for a fortune than tear
my Natalie from the life she enjoys. So it was I who proposed the
separation as to property. Women are angels who ought not to be mixed up
in the sordid interests of life."

Old Mathias listened in doubt and amazement.

"You have no children, I think," he said.

"Fortunately, none," replied Paul.

"That is not my idea of marriage," remarked the old notary, naively. "A
wife ought, in my opinion, to share the good and evil fortunes of her
husband. I have heard that young married people who love like lovers, do
not want children? Is pleasure the only object of marriage? I say that
object should be the joys of family. Moreover, in this case--I am afraid
you will think me too much of notary--your marriage contract made it
incumbent upon you to have a son. Yes, monsieur le comte, you ought to
have had at once a male heir to consolidate that entail. Why not?
Madame Evangelista was strong and healthy; she had nothing to fear in
maternity. You will tell me, perhaps, that these are the old-fashioned
notions of our ancestors. But in those noble families, Monsieur le
comte, the legitimate wife thought it her duty to bear children and
bring them up nobly; as the Duchesse de Sully, the wife of the great
Sully, said, a wife is not an instrument of pleasure, but the honor and
virtue of her household."

"You don't know women, my good Mathias," said Paul. "In order to be
happy we must love them as they want to be loved. Isn't there something
brutal in at once depriving a wife of her charms, and spoiling her
beauty before she has begun to enjoy it?"

"If you had had children your wife would not have dissipated your
fortune; she would have stayed at home and looked after them."

"If you were right, dear friend," said Paul, frowning, "I should
be still more unhappy than I am. Do not aggravate my sufferings by
preaching to me after my fall. Let me go, without the pang of looking
backward to my mistakes."

The next day Mathias received a bill of exchange for one hundred and
fifty thousand francs from de Marsay.

"You see," said Paul, "he does not write a word to me. He begins by
obliging me. Henri's nature is the most imperfectly perfect, the most
illegally beautiful that I know. If you knew with what superiority that
man, still young, can rise above sentiments, above self-interests, and
judge them, you would be astonished, as I am, to find how much heart he
has."

Mathias tri