“But is it not demoralizing to see such names as Verneuil, Maufrigneuse, and Herouville side by side with those of du Tillet and Nucingen in the Bourse speculations?”
“Our great Unknown is undoubtedly an embryo railway,” said Olivier Vinet.
“Well, to-morrow all Arcis will be upside-down about it,” said Achille Pigoult. “I shall call upon the Unknown and ask him to make me notary of the affair. There’ll be two thousand deeds to draw, at the least.”
“Our romance is turning into a locomotive,” said Ernestine to Cecile.
“A count with a railway is all the more marriageable,” remarked Achille Pigoult. “But who knows whether he is a bachelor?”
“Oh! I shall know that to-morrow from grandpapa,” cried Cecile, with pretended enthusiasm.
“What a jest!” said Madame Mollot. “You can’t really mean, my little Cecile, that you are thinking of that stranger?”
“But the husband is always the stranger,” interposed Olivier Vinet, making a sign to Mademoiselle Beauvisage which she fully understood.
“Why shouldn’t I think of him?” asked Cecile; “that isn’t compromising. Besides, he is, so these gentlemen say, either some great speculator, or some great seigneur, and either would suit me. I love Paris; and I want a house, a carriage, an opera-box, etc., in Paris.”
“That’s right,” said Vinet. “When people dream, they needn’t refuse themselves anything. If I had the pleasure of being your brother I should marry you to the young Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, who seems to me a lively young scamp who will make the money dance, and will laugh at his mother’s prejudices against the actors in the famous Simeuse melodrama.”