“Why do you wish it?”

“Because that girl will spend the mines of Peru.  Besides, see how she rides a horse,—­like the groom of a circus; she is half emancipated already.  Such girls make bad wives.”

Paul pressed the old man’s hand, saying, with a confident air of self-conceit:—­

“Don’t be uneasy as to that!  But now, at this moment, what am I to do?”

“Hold firm to my conditions.  They will consent, for no one’s apparent interest is injured.  Madame Evangelista is very anxious to marry her daughter; I see that in her little game—­Beware of her!”

Paul returned to the salon, where he found his future mother-in-law conversing in a low tone with Solonet.  Natalie, kept outside of these mysterious conferences, was playing with a screen.  Embarrassed by her position, she was thinking to herself:  “How odd it is that they tell me nothing of my own affairs.”

The younger notary had seized, in the main, the future effect of the new proposal, based, as it was, on the self-love of both parties, into which his client had fallen headlong.  Now, while Mathias was more than a mere notary, Solonet was still a young man, and brought into his business the vanity of youth.  It often happens that personal conceit makes a man forgetful of the interests of his client.  In this case, Maitre Solonet, who would not suffer the widow to think that Nestor had vanquished Achilles, advised her to conclude the marriage on the terms proposed.  Little he cared for the future working of the marriage contract; to him, the conditions of victory were:  Madame Evangelista released from her obligations as guardian, her future secured, and Natalie married.

“Bordeaux shall know that you have ceded eleven hundred thousand francs to your daughter, and that you still have twenty-five thousand francs a year left,” whispered Solonet to his client.  “For my part, I did not expect to obtain such a fine result.”

“But,” she said, “explain to me why the creation of this entail should have calmed the storm at once.”

“It relieves their distrust of you and your daughter.  An entail is unchangeable; neither husband nor wife can touch that capital.”

“Then this arrangement is positively insulting!”

“No; we call it simply precaution.  The old fellow has caught you in a net.  If you refuse to consent to the entail, he can reply:  ’Then your object is to squander the fortune of my client, who, by the creation of this entail, is protected from all such injury as securely as if the marriage took place under the “regime dotal."’”

Solonet quieted his own scruples by reflecting:  “After all, these stipulations will take effect only in the future, by which time Madame Evangelista will be dead and buried.”

Madame Evangelista contented herself, for the present, with these explanations, having full confidence in Solonet.  She was wholly ignorant of law; considering her daughter as good as married, she thought she had gained her end, and was filled with the joy of success.  Thus, as Mathias had shrewdly calculated, neither Solonet nor Madame Evangelista understood as yet, to its full extent, this scheme which he had based on reasons that were undeniable.