misfortune when they sacrificed me to family considerations. You may,
perhaps, blame me for seeking alleviations, but you will certainly feel
for me."

"After all the endless pains you take to settle your daughters
suitably!" muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the Vidame.

The Princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts. "My dear
little girl," she said, "be happy, if you can. We are not talking of
troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it with social usages. We
all of us here assembled know that marriage is a defective institution
tempered by love. But when you take a lover, is there any need to make
your bed in the Place du Carrousel? See now, just be a bit reasonable,
and hear what we have to say."

"I am listening."

"Mme la Duchesse," began the Duc de Grandlieu, "if it were any part of
an uncle's duty to look after his nieces, he ought to have a position;
society would owe him honours and rewards and a salary, exactly as if
he were in the King's service. So I am not here to talk about my nephew,
but of your own interests. Let us look ahead a little. If you persist in
making a scandal--I have seen the animal before, and I own that I have
no great liking for him--Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care
a rap for anyone but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick
to your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a
nobody. The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have just
inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for his
mistresses' amusements. You will be bound and gagged by the law;
you will have to say _Amen_ to all these arrangements. Suppose M. de
Montriveau leaves you----dear me! do not let us put ourselves in a
passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a woman while she is young
and pretty; still, we have seen so many pretty women left disconsolate,
even among princesses, that you will permit the supposition, an all but
impossible supposition I quite wish to believe.----Well, suppose that
he goes, what will become of you without a husband? Keep well with your
husband as you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a
woman's parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse. I
am supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am leaving
unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the reckoning. This
being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may have children. What are
they to be? Montriveaus? Ver