CHAPTER XXIII.
A PARSON TREADS THE PRIMROSE PATH IN PARIS.
"Bel homme!" exclaimed the Marquise de Fleury admiringly.
"Belle femme!" echoed the hussar sadly.
"Be everything that is charming, Adolphe, I conjure you. So much depends upon Natalie's disposition."
From which brief conversation, which took place as the speakers left the hotel where the Leonard Claghorns were established, it may be correctly inferred that a friendly reception had been accorded the newly married pair by the French relatives of the bride. The noble lady, doubtless, felt all the affection for her former ward that she had, during the visit, so eloquently expressed, so that inclination prescribed the same course that policy would have indicated. The Marquise was still the custodian of property belonging to Natalie, and settlement of accounts could be much better adjusted in a spirit of indulgent friendship than in the cold and calculating spirit of business; and though Natalie and her dowry were gone forever, in that distant land whence she had returned with a husband, there were golden maids languishing for Marquises. "These Yankees," she observed to her son, "they sell their souls for money—the men; the women sell their bodies, and such soul as goes with them, for titles. Are you not a Marquis, of the ancien regime? It behooves us, my child, to be gracious to this wedded priest; he may know of a partie."
"I am so, mama. Du reste, he is beau garçon, and seems amiable and amusing."
"Cultivate him, my infant; a voyage to America may be your destiny. It is a rich family—fabulous. There may be maids in plenty among these Claghorns."
The two young men, except for the pacific disposition of their womankind, might have been inclined to regard one another askance. For, in the person of the possessor of Natalie and her dowry the brave hussar saw one who however innocently, was still the ravisher of his rights; while in this being, in all the glory of fur and feather, sabretache and jangling sword, boots and buttons, braid and golden stripes, with a pervading tone of red and blue, Leonard beheld a startling and, at first, unpleasing creation. But the lieutenant, admonished by his mama, and sensible of the interests at stake, and genial by nature, thawed almost immediately, and the boulevardier and the theologian were friends.