py to think that you may
find happiness in this union; but I act on considerations of honor and
good feeling which you must understand, and which I cannot speak of
here, as they reopen wounds still ready to bleed----"

The Baroness telegraphed a signal to Hortense, who tucked her little
one under her arm, saying, "Come Wenceslas, and have your bath!
--Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel."

The Baroness also bowed to Crevel without a word; and Crevel could not
help smiling at the child's astonishment when threatened with this
impromptu tubbing.

"You, monsieur," said Victorin, when he found himself alone with
Lisbeth, his wife, and his father-in-law, "are about to marry a woman
loaded with the spoils of my father; it was she who, in cold blood,
brought him down to such depths; a woman who is the son-in-law's
mistress after ruining the father-in-law; who is the cause of constant
grief to my sister!--And you fancy that I shall seem to sanction your
madness by my presence? I deeply pity you, dear Monsieur Crevel; you
have no family feeling; you do not understand the unity of the honor
which binds the members of it together. There is no arguing with
passion--as I have too much reason to know. The slaves of their
passions are as deaf as they are blind. Your daughter Celestine has
too strong a sense of her duty to proffer a word of reproach."

"That would, indeed, be a pretty thing!" cried Crevel, trying to cut
short this harangue.

"Celestine would not be my wife if she made the slightest
remonstrance," the lawyer went on. "But I, at least, may try to stop
you before you step over the precipice, especially after giving you
ample proof of my disinterestedness. It is not your fortune, it is you
that I care about. Nay, to make it quite plain to you, I may add, if
it were only to set your mind at ease with regard to your marriage
contract, that I am now in a position which leaves me with nothing to
wish for--"

"Thanks to me!" exclaimed Crevel, whose face was purple.

"Thanks to Celestine's fortune," replied Victorin. "And if you regret
having given to your daughter as a present from yourself, a sum which
is not half what her mother left her, I can only say that we are
prepared to give it back."

"And do you not know, my respected son-in-law," said Crevel, striking
an attitude, "that under the shelter of my name Madame Marneffe is not
called upon to answer for her conduct excepting as my wife--as Madame
Crevel?"

"That is, no