citizens, Rue des Lombards----"

"Well, then, why does not the lover marry her?"

"Dead."

"What a romance! Such things are nowhere to be heard of but in the Rue
des Lombards."

"But do not take it into your head that a jealous brother murdered the
seducer. The young man died in the most commonplace way of a pleurisy
caught as he came out of the theatre. A head-clerk and penniless,
the man entrapped the daughter in order to marry into the business--A
judgment from heaven, I call it!"

"Where did you hear the story?"

"From Malaga; the notary is her _milord_."

"What, Cardot, the son of that little old man in hair-powder,
Florentine's first friend?"

"Just so. Malaga, whose 'fancy' is a little tomtit of a fiddler of
eighteen, cannot in conscience make such a boy marry the girl. Besides,
she has no cause to do him an ill turn.--Indeed, Monsieur Cardot wants a
man of thirty at least. Our notary, I feel sure, will be proud to have a
famous man for his son-in-law. So just feel yourself all over.--You will
pay your debts, you will have twelve thousand francs a year, and be a
father without any trouble on your part; what do you say to that to the
good? And, after all, you only marry a very consolable widow. There is
an income of fifty thousand francs in the house, and the value of the
connection, so in due time you may look forward to not less than fifteen
thousand francs a year more for your share, and you will enter a family
holding a fine political position; Cardot is the brother-in-law of old
Camusot, the depute who lived so long with Fanny Beaupre."

"Yes," said Lousteau, "old Camusot married little Daddy Cardot's eldest
daughter, and they had high times together!"

"Well!" Madame Schontz went on, "and Madame Cardot, the notary's wife,
was a Chiffreville--manufacturers of chemical products, the aristocracy
of these days! Potash, I tell you! Still, this is the unpleasant side of
the matter. You will have a terrible mother-in-law, a woman capable of
killing her daughter if she knew--! This Cardot woman is a bigot; she
has lips like two faded narrow pink ribbons.

"A man of the town like you would never pass muster with that woman,
who, in her well-meaning way, will spy out your bachelor life and know
every fact of the past. However, Cardot says he means to exert his
paternal authority. The poor man will be obliged to do the civil to his
wife for some days; a woman made of wood, my dear fellow; Malaga, who
has