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She seemed to me to have known everybody worth knowing from the Duke of Wellington to the last new verse-maker. And she talked like an angel, but her views upon poetry as a calling in life, shocked me not a little. She said she preferred a mariage de convenance to a love match, because it generally turned out better.
Baroness de Simonie will give another entertainment to-morrow. She will invite all her friends and acquaintances, but especially Count Andreossy's aids, Colonel Mariage, Captain de Guesniard, Lieutenant-colonel Schweitzer, the two Counts von Poldring, and moreover a number of French and Austrian officers, magistrates and ladies.
"Do not fear," he replied: "you shall come back to me an honored daughter." While in Martinique, Jerome Bonaparte said to a former resident of Baltimore, "Ah! il me faut une mariage de convenance." "Not so," rejoined the lady; "and I know the most beautiful woman in the world, whom you must marry Miss Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore." And so he first heard her name.
Now they were on the heights of intellect, talking poetry and philosophy, and reading Lassalle's works; now they were discussing Balzac's Physiologie du Mariage. Anon Lassalle was a large dog, gambolling before his capricious mistress. "Lie down, sir," she cried once, as he was reading a poem to her.
Now, we note this detail, for the pure satisfaction of being exact, it chanced that the 16th fell on Shrove Tuesday. Hesitations, scruples, particularly on the part of Aunt Gillenormand. "Shrove Tuesday!" exclaimed the grandfather, "so much the better. There is a proverb: "'Mariage un Mardi gras N'aura point enfants ingrats. Let us proceed. Here goes for the 16th! Do you want to delay, Marius?"
He had felt happy to-night not madly, foolishly happy, as so many men feel at such moments, but reasonably, decorously pleased with his present and his future. He was making a mariage de convenance, but there had been another man on the lists, a younger man than himself, and that had added a most pleasing zest to the pursuit.
Colonel Mariage held out both hands to the old man, but the baron contented himself with placing the finger-tips of the little hand adorned with glittering rings in the colonel's right hand a moment, and then sank into the armchair, panting for breath. "Pardon me," he gasped, "but the exertion of climbing your two long flights of stairs has exhausted my strength, and I must rest.
"Une mariage de reclame," observed Miss Van Arsdale. "Is it that that constitutes his charm for you?" Miss Van Arsdale's smile was still instinct with mockery, but there had crept into it a quality of indulgence. "No," answered the girl. Her face became thoughtful and serious. "It's something else. He he carried me off my feet from the moment I met him. He was drunk, too, that first time.
"After considerable hesitation she said her health; but, as I say, she would not speak out, and such an excuse between us is monstrous! Ours is not a formal 'mariage de convenance; it lies with ourselves. She is obviously not seriously ill; if she hesitates on her own account she must know she has nothing to fear from me; if she hesitates on mine, then it is folly and nonsense.
"At Castle Ebersdorf, my dear colonel. Surely you know that, after the battle of Aspern, when Napoleon left his exhausted and conquered army on the island of Lobau, and went to Castle Ebersdorf himself to enjoy a refreshing sleep after his first great defeat." "Yes, that sleep was really singular enough," said Mariage thoughtfully.
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