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The Marriage Contract-Part8_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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the most brilliant offers for my daughter's sake, I should be



suspected of such a piece of folly as marrying again at thirty-nine

years of age. If we were not talking business I should regard your



suggestion as an impertinence."

"Would it not be more impertinent if I suggested that you could not



marry again?"

"Can and will are separate terms," remarked Solonet, gallantly.



"Well," resumed Maitre Mathias, "we will say nothing of your marriage.

You may, and we all desire it, live for forty-five years to come. Now,



if you keep for yourself the life-interest in your daughter's

patrimony, your children are laid on the shelf for the best years of



their lives."

"What does that mean?" said the widow. "I don't understand being laid



on a shelf."

Solonet, the man of elegance and good taste, began to laugh.



"I'll translate it for you," said Mathias. "If your children are wise

they will think of the future. To think of the future means laying by



half our income, provided we have only two children, to whom we are

bound to give a fine education and a handsome dowry. Your daughter and



son-in-law will, therefore, be reduced to live on twenty thousand

francs a year, though each has spent fifty thousand while still



unmarried. But that is nothing. The law obliges my client to account,

hereafter, to his children for the eleven hundred and fifty-six



thousand francs of their mother's patrimony; yet he may not have

received them if his wife should die and madame should survive her,



which may very well happen. To sign such a contract is to fling one's

self into the river, bound hand and foot. You wish to make your



daughter happy, do you not? If she loves her husband, a fact which

notaries never doubt, she will share his troubles. Madame, I see



enough in this scheme to make her die of grief and anxiety; you are

consigning her to poverty. Yes, madame, poverty; to persons accustomed



to the use of one hundred thousand francs a year, twenty thousand is

poverty. Moreover, if Monsieur le comte, out of love for his wife,



were guilty of extravagance, she could ruin him by exercising her

rights when misfortunes overtook him. I plead now for you, for them,



for their children, for every one."

"The old fellow makes a lot of smoke with his cannon," thought Maitre



Solonet, giving his client a look, which meant, "Keep on!"

"There is one way of combining all interests," replied Madame



Evangelista, calmly. "I can reserve to myself only the necessary cost

of living in a convent, and my children can have my property at once.



I can renounce the world, if such anticipated death conduces to the

welfare of my daughter."



"Madame," said the old notary, "let us take time to consider and

weigh, deliberately, the course we had best pursue to conciliate all



interests."

"Good heavens! monsieur," cried Madame Evangelista, who saw defeat in



delay, "everything has already been considered and weighed. I was

ignorant of what the process of marriage is in France; I am a Spaniard



and a Creole. I did not know that in order to marry my daughter it was

necessary to reckon up the days which God may still grant me; that my



child would suffer because I live; that I do harm by living, and by

having lived! When my husband married me I had nothing but my name and



my person. My name alone was a fortune to him, which dwarfed his own.

What wealth can equal that of a great name? My dowry was beauty,



virtue, happiness, birth, education. Can money give those treasures?

If Natalie's father could overhear this conversation, his generous



soul would be wounded forever, and his happiness in paradise

destroyed. I dissipated, foolishly, perhaps, a few of his millions



without a quiver ever coming to his eyelids. Since his death, I have

grown economical and orderly in comparison with the life he encouraged



me to lead--Come, let us break this thing off! Monsieur de Manerville

is so disappointed that I--"



No descriptive language can express the confusion and shock which the

words, "break off," introduced into the conversation. It is enough to



say that these four apparently well-bred persons all talked at once.

"In Spain people marry in the Spanish fashion, or as they please; but



in France they marry according to French law, sensibly, and as best

they can," said Mathias.



"Ah, madame," cried Paul, coming out of his stupefaction, "you mistake

my feelings."



"This is not a matter of feeling," said the old notary, trying to stop




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