“My dear fellow, you have a chance of marrying.”
“I can marry very often, happily, my dear.”
“When I say marrying, I mean marrying well. You have no prejudices: I need not mince matters. This is the position: A young lady has got into trouble; her mother knows nothing of even a kiss. Her father is an honest notary, a man of honor; he has been wise enough to keep it dark. He wants to get his daughter married within a fortnight, and he will give her a fortune of a hundred and fifty thousand francs—for he has three other children; but—and it is not a bad idea—he will add a hundred thousand francs, under the rose, hand to hand, to cover the damages. They are an old family of Paris citizens, Rue des Lombards——”
“Well, then, why does not the lover marry her?”
“Dead.”
“What a romance! Such things are nowhere to be heard of but in the Rue des Lombards.”
“But do not take it into your head that a jealous brother murdered the seducer. The young man died in the most commonplace way of a pleurisy caught as he came out of the theatre. A head-clerk and penniless, the man entrapped the daughter in order to marry into the business—A judgment from heaven, I call it!”
“Where did you hear the story?”
“From Malaga; the notary is her milord.”
“What, Cardot, the son of that little old man in hair-powder, Florentine’s first friend?”