It was on account of that decision that I rejected the little Marquis de Marillac last year. He was one of the five. I could have loved him; really, I had already begun to. Then I saw his mother. Then I stopped.
She was a terrible creature—strict, lugubrious, and ferociously dévote. She expected her daughter-in-law to go and bury herself in the depths of Bretagne for eight months out of the twelve. Certainly, it would have been a saving—but at what a cost! What slavery! Besides, what would be the good of getting married, if, the day after leaving girlhood, the wife had to become a child and go back into leading-strings again the next day?
Now let me see. Where was I? I've really quite forgotten. Oh, I remember. The music began again, as I said. It was the last piece. We four sat down in a row in the following order: I, mama, papa, and he. It was scarcely an hour before that I had first set eyes on him, and we were already quite a little family party, we four, sitting stupidly and stiffly in a straight line on our chairs.
Some short waltzes of Beethoven were played, with intervals of one minute between. During the first interval mother said to me:
"Well, what do you think of him, now that you have seen him?"
"The same as before, mama."
"Is he all right?"
"He'll do."
"Then your father may venture to ask him to dinner?"
"Wouldn't that be hurrying matters rather too much?"