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The Marriage Contract
The great secret of social alchemy, my dear Paul, is to get the most we can out of each age of life through which we pass; to have and to hold the buds of our spring, the flowers of our summer, the fruits of our autumn. We amused ourselves once, a few good fellows and I, for a dozen or more years, like mousquetaires, black, red, and gray; we denied ourselves nothing, not even an occasional filibustering here and there. Now we are going to shake down the plums which age and experience have ripened. Be one of us; you shall have your share in the pudding we are going to cook.
Come; you will find a friend all yours in the skin of
H. de Marsay.
As Paul de Manerville ended the reading of this letter, which fell like the blows of a pickaxe on the edifice of his hopes, his illusions, and his love, the vessel which bore him from France was beyond the Azores. In the midst of this utter devastation a cold and impotent anger laid hold of him.
“What had I done to them?” he said to himself.
That is the question of fools, of feeble beings, who, seeing nothing, can nothing foresee. Then he cried aloud: “Henri! Henri!” to his loyal friend. Many a man would have gone mad; Paul went to bed and slept that heavy sleep which follows immense disasters, – the sleep that seized Napoleon after Waterloo.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human ComedyCasa-Real, Duc de
The Quest of the Absolute
Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
The Quest of the Absolute
Magus, Elie
The Vendetta
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Pierre Grassou
Cousin Pons
Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de
The Thirteen
The Ball at Sceaux
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Manerville, Comtesse Paul de
The Lily of the Valley
A Daughter of Eve
Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
The Lily of the Valley
Father Goriot
Jealousies of a Country Town
Ursule Mirouet
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modeste Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
Maulincour, Baronne de
The Thirteen
Stevens, Dinah
Cousin Pons
Vandenesse, Comte Felix de
The Lily of the Valley
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Cesar Birotteau
Letters of Two Brides
A Start in Life
The Secrets of a Princess
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
