This passage comes thirteen pages before the end of the novel. Had I been the editor, I should have insisted that this coda be placed at the very end.
A HARD CASE
THE GOLDEN LION OF GRANPERE
Michel Voss is a hard case. His second wife's niece, Marie, and his son (by his first wife) George want to marry each other. Marie has lived in the Voss household since becoming an orphan at age fifteen, and now at age twenty she is quietly running the family inn, the Lion d'Or at Granpere. But Michel thinks his son, about twenty-five years of age, should prove himself in the world before marrying. "I won't have it, George," he declares, and his word is law. And thereby hangs the tale.
Trollope loved the hard cases. Perhaps none was harder than Louis Trevelyan, whose terminal stubbornness was celebrated in He Knew He was Right. The Last Chronicle of Barset revolves around the celebrated stubbornness of Josiah Crawley, the perpetual curate who walked miles through the mud to face down Bishop Proudie and his wife in a triumphant confrontation. Linda Tressel, in the novel bearing her name, falls victim to her Aunt Charlotte, a religious zealot who insists on a marriage that Linda refuses. Mr. Whittlestaff, in An Old Man's Love, resisted giving up his young fiancée to her young lover for long enough to make a short novel out of it. And there are others—strong characters whose steadfastness of purpose forces everyone else to bend or face a long struggle.
We are told that Michel Voss might have agreed to his son's marriage to his niece if he had been consulted beforehand. As it was, when he hears of it, he immediately determines that it is improper. Considering it his duty to make arrangements for his niece's welfare, he arranges what he thinks to be a suitable match with a prospering—though a bit effeminate—young man who calls at the inn while trading in textiles. M. Urmand suffers in comparison to George in Marie's eyes; to her he is simply a "rich trader," while George is a "real man."
Marie's relation to Michel, the master of the inn, is an interesting one. She supervises all that takes place at the supper table in the inn, "standing now close behind her uncle with both her hands upon his head; and she would often stand so after the supper was commenced, only moving to attend upon him, or to supplement the services of Peter and the maidservant when she perceived that they were becoming for a time inadequate to their duties." When urged by her uncle to sit at table next to Urmand, the anointed suitor, her only response is to gently pull his ears.
This is one of the short novels Trollope set in Europe in an effort to break away from the template of his portrayals of English life. The Golden Lion is in Alsace-Lorraine, and in this memorable image of Marie, Trollope has epitomized the Continental culture, so foreign to the English. Can one imagine a young English woman standing behind her uncle with her hands on his head while supervising his table?
Michel is the character of interest. The others play their parts, with events propelled in large part because of lack of communication. When Marie learns that George is still serious about his love for her, she brings herself to vow that she will never marry M. Urmand; but it apparently does not occur to her that she can marry George without his father's permission. As for Michel himself, he appears to have painted himself into a corner. The Church will certainly be of no assistance to him. The Catholic priest is summoned to consult. "This was very distasteful to Michel Voss, because he was himself a Protestant, and, having lived all his life with a Protestant son and two Roman Catholic women in the house, he had come to feel that Father Gondin's religion was a religion for the weaker sex." He was not troubled by doctrinal differences, nor was he too particular about what betrothal meant. "He hardly knew himself how far that betrothal was a binding ceremony. But he felt strongly that he had committed himself to the marriage; that it did not become him to allow that his son had been right; and also that if Marie would only marry the man, she would find herself quite happy in her new home." Indeed, all Marie's senior advisors—her aunt, her uncle, the priest—fail to give her credit for having a mind, or rights, of her own. After a short time of marriage to her betrothed, she would be perfectly happy with her new domestic arrangements and forget all about the love of her youth.