when we sign the contract, just as the government flings a fete to the

people in the great square of the Champs-Elysees, and we will give our
dear friends the dolorous pleasure of signing a marriage-contract such

as they have seldom heard of in the provinces."
This little incident proved of great importance. Madame Evangelista

invited all Bordeaux to witness the signature of the contract, and
showed her intention of displaying in this last fete a luxury which

should refute the foolish lies of the community.
The preparations for this event required over a month, and it was

called the fete of the camellias. Immense quantities of that beautiful
flower were massed on the staircase, and in the antechamber and

supper-room. During this month the formalities for constituting the
entail were concluded in Paris; the estates adjoining Lanstrac were

purchased, the banns were published, and all doubts finally
dissipated. Friends and enemies thought only of preparing their

toilets for the coming fete.
The time occupied by these events obscured the difficulties raised by

the first discussion, and swept into oblivion the words and arguments
of that stormy conference. Neither Paul nor his mother-in-law

continued to think of them. Were they not, after all, as Madame
Evangelista had said, the affair of the two notaries?

But--to whom has it never happened, when life is in its fullest flow,
to be suddenly changed by the voice of memory, raised, perhaps, too

late, reminding us of some important new fact, some threatened danger?
On the morning of the day when the contract was to be signed and the

fete given, one of these flashes of the soul illuminated the mind of
Madame Evangelista during the semi-somnolence of her waking hour. The

words that she herself had uttered at the moment when Mathias acceded
to Solonet's conditions, "Questa coda non e di questo gatto," were

cried aloud in her mind by that voice of memory. In spite of her
incapacity for business, Madame Evangelista's shrewdness told her:--

"If so clever a notary as Mathias was pacified, it must have been that
he saw compensation at the cost of SOME ONE."

That some one could not be Paul, as she had blindly hoped. Could it be
that her daughter's fortune was to pay the costs of war? She resolved

to demand explanations on the tenor of the contract, not reflecting on
the course she would have to take in case she found her interests

seriously compromised. This day had so powerful an influence on Paul
de Manerville's conjugal life that it is necessary to explain certain

of the external circumstances which accompanied it.
Madame Evangelista had shrunk from no expense for this dazzling fete.

The court-yard was gravelled and converted into a tent, and filled
with shrubs, although it was winter. The camellias, of which so much

had been said from Angouleme to Dax, were banked on the staircase and
in the vestibules. Wall partitions had disappeared to enlarge the

supper-room and the ball-room where the dancing was to be. Bordeaux, a
city famous for the luxury of colonial fortunes, was on a tiptoe of

expectation for this scene of fairyland. About eight o'clock, as the
last discussion of the contract was taking place within the house, the

inquisitive populace, anxious to see the ladies in full dress getting
out of their carriages, formed in two hedges on either side of the

porte-cochere. Thus the sumptuousatmosphere of a fete acted upon all
minds at the moment when the contract was being signed, illuminating

colored lamps lighted up the shrubs, and the wheels of the arriving
guests echoed from the court-yard. The two notaries had dined with the

bridal pair and their mother. Mathias's head-clerk, whose business it
was to receive the signatures of the guests during the evening (taking

due care that the contract was not surreptitiously read by the
signers), was also present at the dinner.

No bridaltoilet was ever comparable with that of Natalie, whose
beauty, decked with laces and satin, her hair coquettishly falling in

a myriad of curls about her throat, resembled that of a flower encased
in its foliage. Madame Evangelista, robed in a gown of cherry velvet,

a color judiciously chosen to heighten the brilliancy of her skin and
her black hair and eyes, glowed with the beauty of a woman at forty,

and wore her pearl necklace, clasped with the "Discreto," a visible
contradiction to the late calumnies.

To fully explain this scene, it is necessary to say that Paul and
Natalie sat together on a sofa beside the fireplace and paid no

attention to the reading of the documents. Equally childish and
equally happy, regarding life as a cloudless sky, rich, young, and

loving, they chattered to each other in a low voice, sinking into
whispers. Arming his love with the presence of legality, Paul took

delight in kissing the tips of Natalie's fingers, in lightly touching
her snowy shoulders and the waving curls of her hair, hiding from the

eyes of others these joys of illegalemancipation. Natalie played with
a screen of peacock's feathers given to her by Paul,--a gift which is

to love, according to superstitiousbelief in certain countries, as
dangerous an omen as the gift of scissors or other cutting

instruments, which recall, no doubt, the Parces of antiquity.
Seated beside the two notaries, Madame Evangelista gave her closest

attention to the reading of the documents. After listening to the
guardianship account, most ably written out by Solonet, in which

Natalie's share of the three million and more francs left by Monsieur
Evangelista was shown to be the much-debated eleven hundred and fifty-

six thousand, Madame Evangelista said to the heedless young couple:--
"Come, listen, listen, my children; this is your marriage contract."

The clerk drank a glass of iced-water, Solonet and Mathias blew their
noses, Paul and Natalie looked at the four personages before them,

listened to the preamble, and returned to their chatter. The statement
of the property brought by each party; the general deed of gift in the

event of death without issue; the deed of gift of one-fourth in life-
interest and one-fourth in capital without interest, allowed by the

Code, whatever be the number of the children; the constitution of a
common fund for husband and wife; the settlement of the diamonds on

the wife, the library and horses on the husband, were duly read and
passed without observations. Then followed the constitution of the

entail. When all was read and nothing remained but to sign the
contract, Madame Evangelista demanded to know what would be the

ultimate effect of the entail.
"An entail, madam," replied Solonet, "means an inalienable right to

the inheritance of certain property belonging to both husband and
wife, which is settled from generation to generation on the eldest son

of the house, without, however, depriving him of his right to share in
the division of the rest of the property."

"What will be the effect of this on my daughter's rights?"
Maitre Mathias, incapable of disguising the truth, replied:--

"Madame, an entail being an appanage, or portion of property set aside
for this purpose from the fortunes of husband and wife, it follows

that if the wife dies first, leaving several children, one of them a
son, Monsieur de Manerville will owe those children three hundred and

sixty thousand francs only, from which he will deduct his fourth in
life-interest and his fourth in capital. Thus his debt to those

children will be reduced to one hundred and sixty thousand francs, or
thereabouts, exclusive of his savings and profits from the common fund

constituted for husband and wife. If, on the contrary, he dies first,
leaving a male heir, Madame de Manerville has a right to three hundred

and sixty thousand francs only, and to her deeds of gift of such of
her husband's property as is not included in the entail, to the

diamonds now settled upon her, and to her profits and savings from the
common fund."

The effect of Maitre Mathias's astute and far-sighted policy were now
plainly seen.

"My daughter is ruined," said Madame Evangelista in a low voice.
The old and the young notary both overheard the words.

"Is it ruin," replied Mathias, speakinggently, "to constitute for her
family an indestructible fortune?"

The younger notary, seeing the expression of his client's face,
thought it judicious in him to state the disaster in plain terms.

"We tried to trick them out of three hundred thousand francs," he
whispered to the angry woman. "They have actually laid hold of eight

hundred thousand; it is a loss of four hundred thousand from our
interests for the benefit of the children. You must now either break

the marriage off at once, or carry it through," concluded Solonet.
It is impossible to describe the moment of silence that followed.

Maitre Mathias waited in triumph the signature of the two persons who
had expected to rob his client. Natalie, not competent to understand