besides, I was in no hurry to marry.  Mamma tried to make me hear reason.  I was going to let slip an admirable chance.  The Duke of Courtalin was the target of all the ambitious mothers—­a great name, a great position, a great fortune!  I should deeply regret some day to have shown such disdain for advantages like these, etc.  And to all these things, which were so true and sensible, I could find only one word to say:  his name, Gontran, Gontran, Gontran!  Gontran or the convent, and the most rigorous one of all, the Carmel, in sackcloth and ashes!  Oh, Aunt Louise, do look at him!  He listens to all this with an unbearable little air of fatuity.”

“You have forbidden me to speak.”

“True.  Don’t speak; but you have deserved a little lesson in modesty and humility.  Good gracious! you think perhaps it was for your merits that I chose you, insisted on you.  You would be far from the mark, my poor dear.  It is, on the contrary, because of your want of merit.  Now, as to M. de Courtalin.  Why, there is a man of merit!  I had, from morning to night, M. de Courtalin’s merit dinned into my ears, and that was why I had taken a dislike to him.  What I dreaded more than anything for a husband was what is called a superior man; and mamma went the wrong way to work to win me over to her candidate when she said to me:  ’He is a very intelligent, very serious, very deep-thinking, and very distinguished man; he has spent his youth honorably; he has been a model son, and would make a model husband.’  It made me shiver to hear mamma talk so.  I know nothing more awful than people who are always, always right; who, under all circumstances, give evidence of unfailing good sense; who crush us with their superiority.  With Gontran I am easy, quite easy.  It isn’t he who would crush me with his superiority.  I do not know much, Aunt Louise, but my ignorance beside his is learning.  He had great trouble in getting his baccalaureate.  He flunked three times.”

“Flunked!” exclaimed Aunt Louise.

“It means failed.  He taught me the word.  All the queer words I use, Aunt Louise, were taught me by him.”

“Come, now—­”

“Yes, all.  I can see him now, coming to the house one day, and I can hear him say, ‘Flunked again!’ That was the third time.  Then he went and took his examination in the country at a little college at Douai; it was easier, and he passed at last.  M. de Courtalin has never been flunked; he is everything that one can be at his age:  bachelor, advocate, lawyer, and grave, exact, and severe in his language, and dressed—­always in a black frock-coat, with two rows of buttons, always all buttoned—­in short, a man of the past.  And what a future before him!  Already a member of the General Council, and very eloquent, very influential, he will be deputy in three years, and then, when we have a government that people of our class can recognize, minister, ambassador, and I know not what!  The highest offices wait for him, and all his ambitions will be legitimate when he has a chance to put his superior talents at the service of the monarchy.  That’s one of mamma’s phrases.  Whereas you, my poor Gontran—­you will never be anything other than a very funny and very nice old dear, whom I shall lead as I like with my little finger.”