ting may be made for
a thousand or twelve hundred; one is archaeologically what a picture
by Raphael is in painting, the other is a copy. At what would you
value a copy of a Raphael? Thus Crevel's mansion was a splendid
example of the luxury of idiots, while Josepha's was a perfect model
of an artist's home.

"War is declared," said Crevel, going up to Madame Marneffe.

She rang the bell.

"Go and find Monsieur Berthier," said she to the man-servant, "and do
not return without him. If you had succeeded," said she, embracing
Crevel, "we would have postponed our happiness, my dear Daddy, and
have given a really splendid entertainment; but when a whole family is
set against a match, my dear, decency requires that the wedding shall
be a quiet one, especially when the lady is a widow."

"On the contrary, I intend to make a display of magnificence _a la_
Louis XIV.," said Crevel, who of late had held the eighteenth century
rather cheap. "I have ordered new carriages; there is one for monsieur
and one for madame, two neat coupes; and a chaise, a handsome
traveling carriage with a splendid hammercloth, on springs that
tremble like Madame Hulot."

"Oh, ho! _You intend?_--Then you have ceased to be my lamb?--No, no,
my friend, you will do what _I_ intend. We will sign the contract
quietly--just ourselves--this afternoon. Then, on Wednesday, we will
be regularly married, really married, in mufti, as my poor mother
would have said. We will walk to church, plainly dressed, and have
only a low mass. Our witnesses are Stidmann, Steinbock, Vignon, and
Massol, all wide-awake men, who will be at the mairie by chance, and
who will so far sacrifice themselves as to attend mass.

"Your colleague will perform the civil marriage, for once in a way, as
early as half-past nine. Mass is at ten; we shall be at home to
breakfast by half-past eleven.

"I have promised our guests that we will sit at table till the
evening. There will be Bixiou, your old official chum du Tillet,
Lousteau, Vernisset, Leon de Lora, Vernou, all the wittiest men in
Paris, who will not know that we are married. We will play them a
little trick, we will get just a little tipsy, and Lisbeth must join
us. I want her to study matrimony; Bixiou shall make love to her, and
--and enlighten her darkness."

For two hours Madame Marneffe went on talking nonsense, and Crevel
made this judicious reflection:

"How can so light-hearted a creature be utterly depraved?
Feath