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Updated: May 6, 2025
However, to counterbalance her personal defects, the marquise gave her daughter a distinguished air, subjected her to hygienic treatment which provisionally kept her nose at a reasonable flesh-tint, taught her the art of dressing well, endowed her with charming manners, showed her the trick of melancholy glances which interest a man and make him believe that he has found a long-sought angel, taught her the manoeuvre of the foot, letting it peep beneath the petticoat, to show its tiny size, at the moment when the nose became aggressively red; in short, Madame d'Aubrion had cleverly made the very best of her offspring.
"Don't I know about your cousin's return, and his marriage with Mademoiselle d'Aubrion? A woman doesn't carry her wits in her pocket." Eugenie blushed, and remained silent for a moment. From this day forth she assumed the impassible countenance for which her father had been so remarkable.
"You can then become anything you choose, master of the rolls in the council of State, prefect, secretary to an embassy, the ambassador himself, if you like. Charles X. is fond of d'Aubrion; they have known each other from childhood." Intoxicated with ambition, Charles toyed with the hopes thus cleverly presented to him in the guise of confidences poured from heart to heart.
Thus in course of time my son, when he becomes Marquis d'Aubrion, having, as he then will have, an entailed estate with a rental of forty thousand francs a year, can obtain any position in the State which he may think proper to select. We owe ourselves to our children. You see, my cousin, with what good faith I lay the state of my heart, my hopes, and my fortune before you.
By thus uniting their fortunes, living on good terms, and profiting by sinecures, the two families might occupy the hotel d'Aubrion with an income of over a hundred thousand francs. "And when a man has a hundred thousand francs a year, a name, a family, and a position at court, for I will get you appointed as gentleman-of-the-bedchamber, he can do what he likes," she said to Charles.
You can send my dressing-case by the diligence to the hotel d'Aubrion, rue Hillerin-Bertin. "By the diligence!" said Eugenie. "A thing for which I would have laid down my life!" Terrible and utter disaster! The ship went down, leaving not a spar, not a plank, on a vast ocean of hope!
I will admit to you, my dear cousin, that I do not love Mademoiselle d'Aubrion; but in marrying her I secure to my children a social rank whose advantages will one day be incalculable: monarchical principles are daily coming more and more into favor.
By means of full sleeves, deceptive pads, puffed dresses amply trimmed, and high-pressure corsets, she had obtained such curious feminine developments that she ought, for the instruction of mothers, to have exhibited them in a museum. Charles became very intimate with Madame d'Aubrion precisely because she was desirous of becoming intimate with him.
My dear Wife, Charles Grandet has returned from the Indies and has been in Paris about a month "A month!" thought Eugenie, her hand falling to her side. After a pause she resumed the letter, I had to dance attendance before I was allowed to see the future Vicomte d'Aubrion. Though all Paris is talking of his marriage and the banns are published "He wrote to me after that!" thought Eugenie.
When the receipts were all legally registered, and des Grassins had received for his services the sum of fifty thousand francs allowed to him by Eugenie, the president made his way to the hotel d'Aubrion and found Charles just entering his own apartment after a serious encounter with his prospective father-in-law.
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