One afternoon, in May of 1827, young Jacob found his father in the breakfast-room, and said to him:
"Father, I am going to marry Aline Des Anges."
His father, who had been dozing in the sun by the south window, raised his eyes to his son's face with a kindly, blank look, and said, thoughtfully:
"Des Anges. That's a good family, Jacob, and a wonderful woman, Madam Des Anges. Is she alive yet?"
When Madam Des Anges, eighty years old, and strong and well, heard of this, she said:
"It is the etiquette of France that one family should make the proposition to the other family. Under the circumstances I will be the family that proposes. I will make a precedent. The Des Anges make precedents."
And she rode down to the Dolph house in the family carriage—the last time it ever went out—and made her "proposition" to Jacob Dolph the elder, and he brightened up most wonderfully, until you would have thought him quite his old self, and he told her what an honor he esteemed the alliance, and paid her compliments a hundred words long.
And in May of the next year, King's Bridge being out of the question, and etiquette being waived at the universal demand of society, the young couple stood up in the drawing-room of the Dolph house to be wed.