amiliar to all thinkers, her mind, during
sleep, marshalled its ideas, enlightened them, classed them, prepared a
means by which she was to rule Paul's life, and showed her a plan which
she began to carry out on that very to-morrow.

CHAPTER V. THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT--THIRD DAY

Though the excitement of the fete had driven from Paul's mind the
anxious thoughts that now and then assailed it, when he was alone with
himself and in his bed they returned to torment him.

"It seems to me," he said to himself, "that without that good Mathias my
mother-in-law would have tricked me. And yet, is that believable? What
interest could lead her to deceive me? Are we not to join fortunes and
live together? Well, well, why should I worry about it? In two days
Natalie will be my wife, our money relations are plainly defined,
nothing can come between us. Vogue la galere--Nevertheless, I'll be upon
my guard. Suppose Mathias was right? Well, if he was, I'm not obliged to
marry my mother-in-law."

In this second battle of the contract Paul's future had completely
changed in aspect, though he was not aware of it. Of the two persons
whom he was marrying, one, the cleverest, was now his mortal enemy,
and meditated already withdrawing her interests from the common fund.
Incapable of observing the difference that a Creole nature placed
between his mother-in-law and other women, Paul was far from suspecting
her craftiness. The Creole nature is apart from all others; it derives
from Europe by its intellect, from the tropics by the illogical violence
of its passions, from the East by the apathetic indifference with which
it does, or suffers, either good or evil, equally,--a graceful nature
withal, but dangerous, as a child is dangerous if not watched. Like a
child, the Creole woman must have her way immediately; like a child, she
would burn a house to boil an egg. In her soft and easy life she takes
no care upon her mind; but when impassioned, she thinks of all things.
She has something of the perfidy of the Negroes by whom she has been
surrounded from her cradle, but she is also as naive and even, at times,
as artless as they. Like them and like the children, she wishes doggedly
for one thing with a growing intensity of desire, and will brood upon
that idea until she hatches it. A strange assemblage of virtues
and defects! which her Spanish nature had strengthened in Madame
Evangelista, and over which her French experience had cast the g