After a final half hour of discussion concerning the articles, which were already drawn up, divers erasures were made and divers blank spaces filled up. The dowager signed, and as Marcel, still complaining and protesting, started to take the document and submit it to Julie for her ratification, the dowager demanded roughly:
"Why isn't she here? The matter is of sufficient importance for her to leave her dear pavilion for a few moments!"
"You will admit, madame," rejoined Marcel, "that you are not treating the Comtesse d'Estrelle so generously as to make her feel inclined to come into your presence."
"Bah! she is very susceptible! Go to fetch her, Master Thierry! I am in haste to be off, and if, on reading the document, she makes any fuss over it, I am not one of the sort to wait for her. Let her come and state her views here, that will be the shortest way. What is she afraid of? I have nothing more to say to her about her conduct, which I care very little about now, and which I didn't reprove her for after all. Did I say a single word to her just now? If I did touch her a little the other day, it was because she undertook to appeal to feelings which I do not owe her; but let her abstain from recriminations, and I will agree not to humiliate her."
"If you authorize me to go to her with words of peace, and to repeat them in mild and becoming sentences," said Marcel, "I will try to bring her here."
"Moreover," observed the notary, "madame la marquise doubtless has something to say to her outside of the terms of the contract. Madame certainly intends to give her time to find somewhere to go on leaving the hôtel?"
"Yes, yes, to be sure," said the marchioness; "that is my intention. Go, Master Thierry!"
Marcel ran to the pavilion and persuaded Julie to return with him. It had seemed to him that the marchioness, satisfied with her bargain, proposed to try to make some slight amends for her harshness; and it would be more generous of Julie, and perhaps more prudent as well, not to reject that sort of patching up process with which society is accustomed to be content.
Time was pressing, and Marcel was not admitted to the secret at the pavilion; but Julie whispered to Madame Thierry:
"You know now what my marriage portion is; I bring a very small income; but by selling my jewels, we may be able to buy the house at Sèvres. So I am a suitable match for Julien, and everything can be arranged in that direction as nicely as possible."