all that he was making what is called a 'mariage raisonnable'!
Well, if a man wants a wife who is going to set up her own notions, her
own customs, he had better marry a poor girl without fortune! This one
will simply ruin him. My dear, I am continually amazed at the way people
are living whose incomes I know to the last sou. What an example for
Jacqueline! Extravagance, fast living, elegant self-indulgence.... Did
you observe the Baronne's gown?--of rough woolen stuff. She told some
one it was the last creation of Doucet, and you know what that implies!
His serge costs more than one of our velvet gowns.... And then her
artistic tastes, her bric-a brac! Her salon looks like a museum or a
bazaar. I grant you it makes a very pretty setting for her and all
her coquetries. But in my time respectable women were contented with
furniture covered with red or yellow silk damask furnished by their
upholsterers. They didn't go about trying to hunt up the impossible. 'On
ne cherche pas midi a quatorze heures'. You hold, as I do, to the
old fashions, though you are not nearly so old, my dear Elise, and
Jacqueline's mother thought as we think. She would say that her daughter
is being very badly brought up. To be sure, all young creatures nowadays
are the same. Parents, on a plea of tenderness, keep them at home, where
they get spoiled among grown people, when they had much better have the
same kind of education that has succeeded so well with Giselle; bolts on
the garden-gates, wholesome seclusion, the company of girls of their own
age, a great regularity of life, nothing which stimulates either
vanity or imagination. That is the proper way to bring up girls without
notions, girls who will let themselves be married without opposition,
and are satisfied with the state of life to which Providence may be
pleased to call them. For my part, I am enchanted with the ladies in the
Rue de Monsieur, and, what is more, Giselle is very happy among them; to
hear her talk you would suppose she was quite ready to take the veil. Of
course, that is a mere passing fancy. But fancies of that sort are
never dangerous, they have nothing in common with those that are passing
nowadays through most girls' brains. Having 'a day!'--what a foolish
notion: And then to let little girls take part in it, even in a corner
of the room. I'll wager that, though her skirts are half way up her
legs, and her hair is dressed like a baby's, that that little de Nailles
is le