“What!” exclaimed the first: “the actress has, then, restored your money?”
“Read!” said Eusebe, offering the astonished merchants a letter, the contents of which they immediately began to devour. The epistle ran as follows:—
“Eusebe:—You desired to purchase me; but I did not sell myself. I send you the forty-eight notes which you placed in my hands. I deposited the money at my banker’s. The interest has sufficed to defray your expenses. Allow me to retain the leather belt in which you used to carry the money, for my commissions. You will not return to your chestnut woods, and nowhere else could you have further use for this rustic purse.
“Adieu, Eusebe,
“Adéonne.”
“Insolent creature!” muttered Bonnaud, and, turning to the notary, he added, in a whisper, “Will you put in an additional clause, to the effect that, in case of the decease of one of the parties, if there be no children born of their union, all the property shall go to the survivor?”
CHAPTER XLV.
When all the honest bourgeois friends of Bonnaud and Lansade had satisfied their appetites, they did not leave the table, but began to drink, and, as they drank, they sang. It was Bonnaud himself, the father of the bride, who commenced: the guests joined in the chorus. Take ten men of the world, accustomed to every variety of debauch, give them the means to indulge in the most fearful orgies, and at the moment when the riot and revel are at their height call them to the window to see a newly-married couple pass from church. Then you will behold a novel and curious spectacle. The orgies will cease; the ribald song will be hushed. The happy couple will pass, and the innocent laugh of their friends will alone disturb the silence of the hour. These revellers are suddenly reminded of their sisters, of their mothers, and of the days of their youth, blighted and darkened by vice and debauchery. Well, for marriage—this solemn and formidable sacrament,—this act, horrible, or sublime, which rivets forever two beings to a chain, of which each broken link is a grief or a shame—the bourgeois have not the least respect. They await the moment when the priest shall have finished, to break forth in silly songs or idle jests.