“Society, my dear boy, will drop upon you sooner or later. Read Adolphe once more.—Dear me! I fancy I can see you when you and she are used to each other;—I see you dejected, hang-dog, bereft of position and fortune, and fighting like the shareholders of a bogus company when they are tricked by a director!—Your director is happiness.”
“Say no more, Bixiou.”
“But I have only just begun,” said Bixiou. “Listen, my dear boy. Marriage has been out of favor for some time past; but, apart from the advantages it offers in being the only recognized way of certifying heredity, as it affords a good-looking young man, though penniless, the opportunity of making his fortune in two months, it survives in spite of disadvantages. And there is not the man living who would not repent, sooner or later, of having, by his own fault, lost the chance of marrying thirty thousand francs a year.”
“You won’t understand me,” cried Lousteau, in a voice of exasperation. “Go away—she is there——”
“I beg your pardon; why did you not tell me sooner?—You are of age, and so is she,” he added in a lower voice, but loud enough to be heard by Dinah. “She will make you repent bitterly of your happiness!——”
“If it is a folly, I intend to commit it.—Good-bye.”
“A man gone overboard!” cried Bixiou.
“Devil take those friends who think they have a right to preach to you,” said Lousteau, opening the door of the bedroom, where he found Madame de la Baudraye sunk in an armchair and dabbing her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief.
“Oh, why did I come here?” sobbed she. “Good Heavens, why indeed?—Etienne, I am not so provincial as you think me.—You are making a fool of me.”
“Darling angel,” replied Lousteau, taking Dinah in his arms, lifting her from her chair, and dragging her half dead into the drawing-room, “we have both pledged our future, it is sacrifice for sacrifice. While I was loving you at Sancerre, they were engaging me to be married here, but I refused.—Oh! I was extremely distressed——”