“Ah!” said Solonet, “you are beginning to understand business.”

“Alas!  I must,” she said, sighing.

“I am told that a great many persons are coming to your midnight service,” said Solonet, perceiving that his presence was inopportune, and preparing to go.

Madame Evangelista accompanied him to the door of the last salon, and there she said, in a low voice:—­

“I now have personal property to the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand francs; if I can get two hundred thousand for my share of the house it will make a handsome capital, which I shall want to invest to the very best advantage.  I count on you for that.  I shall probably live at Lanstrac.”

The young notary kissed his client’s hand with a gesture of gratitude; for the widow’s tone of voice made Solonet fancy that this alliance, really made from self-interest only, might extend a little farther.

“You can count on me,” he replied.  “I can find you investments in merchandise on which you will risk nothing and make very considerable profits.”

“Adieu until to-morrow,” she said; “you are to be our witness, you know, with Monsieur le Marquis de Gyas.”

“My dear mother,” said Paul, when she returned to them, “why do you refuse to come to Paris?  Natalie is provoked with me, as if I were the cause of your decision.”

“I have thought it all over, my children, and I am sure that I should hamper you.  You would feel obliged to make me a third in all you did, and young people have ideas of their own which I might, unintentionally, thwart.  Go to Paris.  I do not wish to exercise over the Comtesse de Manerville the gentle authority I have held over Natalie.  I desire to leave her wholly to you.  Don’t you see, Paul, that there are habits and ways between us which must be broken up?  My influence ought to yield to yours.  I want you to love me, and to believe that I have your interests more at heart than you think for.  Young husbands are, sooner or later, jealous for the love of a wife for her mother.  Perhaps they are right.  When you are thoroughly united, when love has blended your two souls into one, then, my dear son, you will not fear an opposing influence if I live in your house.  I know the world, and men, and things; I have seen the peace of many a home destroyed by the blind love of mothers who made themselves in the end as intolerable to their daughters as to their sons-in-law.  The affection of old people is often exacting and querulous.  Perhaps I could not efface myself as I should.  I have the weakness to think myself still handsome; I have flatterers who declare that I am still agreeable; I should have, I fear, certain pretensions which might interfere with your lives.  Let me, therefore, make one more sacrifice for your happiness.  I have given you my fortune, and now I desire to resign to you my last vanities as a woman.  Your notary Mathias is getting old.  He cannot look after your estates as I will.  I will be your bailiff; I will create for myself those natural occupations which are the pleasures of old age.  Later, if necessary, I will come to you in Paris, and second you in your projects of ambition.  Come, Paul, be frank; my proposal suits you, does it not?”