"What, man! a woman who loved you for yourself alone?"
"Yes. Oh! I know that she loved me; but that didn’t prevent her being as gluttonous as a cat. However, messieurs, I have no desire to speak ill of her; I shall certainly buy her something; I am too generous to—But let us drop Fifine and talk about my plans. My dear friends, you have no idea what I have in my head—well! it’s a château!"
"A château!" exclaimed Alfred; "why, my poor Robineau, you are mad; if you buy a château you won’t have anything left to keep it up!"
"Bah! I know how to calculate. There are châteaux and châteaux! Why can’t I put a hundred thousand francs into a nice little estate, an estate with a house on it, built in the old style? My notary assures me that he can find such a one very readily; and then, my dear friends, I can assume the name of my estate. That is done every day; and, between ourselves, Robineau is a very vulgar name for a man with twenty-five thousand francs a year."
"What, Monsieur Robineau!" said Edouard; "you, who declared that you should never change, whatever might happen, and whose discourse reminded one of Socrates and Cincinnatus!"
"As I have told you, my friends, I have my plans. I look a long way ahead. I buy a small château, an estate, no matter where, and I assume its name; that gives me at once an air of nobility; then I find a rich heiress, I present myself, I make a favorable impression, and I marry. What do you say to that? It seems to me that’s not a bad scheme; and if I had no other name than Robineau, I could never become allied to a distinguished family! Mon Dieu! my dear Uncle Gratien, what a noble use I will make of your wealth!"
"And to begin with, you propose to discard his name."
"You must see that I do it from policy. It is decided: I shall buy an estate, I shall have peasants and vassals, and they will call me monseigneur!"
"They won’t call you monseigneur, my poor Robineau, because in these days the man who owns lands, houses and farms is not on that account at liberty to dispose at his pleasure of the people who till his fields; and those delightful little prerogatives of cuissage, jambage, marquette, prélibation, and the like, which made the plight of vassals worse than that of beasts of burden, and degraded mankind by exalting one man at the expense of his fellowman—those prerogatives no longer exist; because men love a kind and virtuous master and no longer tremble before an arrogant and dissipated lord; because all men are under the protection of the laws, which ordain obedience and not humiliation; and finally because there are no more serfs except in Russia, where I advise you to go to buy your château, if you want to be called monseigneur. But I really believe, Robineau, that if you were left to your own devices, you would become one of the petty tyrants of the olden time, or at least a wolf, like the one in Little Red Riding Hood."
"I say, messieurs, to my mind, that was a very pretty little prerogative that entitled the lord to be the first man to put his legs into a newly married woman’s bed.—But I will make rosières[2]—that will be just the same thing."