ese fine estates
for years with such care, am I to see them ruined in a single night?
Three million and a half to be hypothecated for eleven hundred thousand
francs these women will force him to squander!"

Discovering thus in the soul of the elder woman intentions which,
without involving crime, theft, swindling, or any actually evil or
blameworthy action, nevertheless belonged to all those criminalities in
embryo, Maitre Mathias felt neither sorrow nor generous indignation.
He was not the Misanthrope; he was an old notary, accustomed in his
business to the shrewd calculations of worldly people, to those clever
bits of treachery which do more fatal injury than open murder on
the high-road committed by some poor devil, who is guillotined in
consequence. To the upper classes of society these passages in life,
these diplomatic meetings and discussions are like the necessary
cesspools where the filth of life is thrown. Full of pity for his
client, Mathias cast a foreseeing eye into the future and saw nothing
good.

"We'll take the field with the same weapons," thought he, "and beat
them."

At this moment, Paul, Solonet and Madame Evangelista, becoming
embarrassed by the old man's silence, felt that the approval of that
censor was necessary to carry out the transaction, and all three turned
to him simultaneously.

"Well, my dear Monsieur Mathias, what do you think of it?" said Paul.

"This is what I think," said the conscientious and uncompromising
notary. "You are not rich enough to commit such regal folly. The estate
of Lanstrac, if estimated at three per cent on its rentals, represents,
with its furniture, one million; the farms of Grassol and Guadet and
your vineyard of Belle-Rose are worth another million; your two houses
in Bordeaux and Paris, with their furniture, a third million. Against
those three millions, yielding forty-seven thousand francs a year,
Mademoiselle Natalie brings eight hundred thousand francs in the
Five-per-cents, the diamonds (supposing them to be worth a hundred
thousand francs, which is still problematical) and fifty thousand francs
in money; in all, one million and fifty thousand francs. In presence of
such facts my brother notary tells you boastfully that we are marrying
equal fortunes! He expects us to encumber ourselves with a debt
of eleven hundred and fifty-six thousand francs to our children by
acknowledging the receipt of our wife's patrimony, when we have actually
received but l