Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/149

 Zélie, as much allured by the sum as by Ursule’s beauty, “if I were to marry her, we should have all.”

“Are you mad? You who will one day have an income of fifty thousand francs and who are to become a deputy! As long as I am alive you shall not be ruined by an idiotic marriage. Seven hundred thousand francs?—a fine thing! The mayor’s only daughter will have fifty thousand francs income, and has already been proposed to me—”

This answer, the first time his mother had ever spoken harshly to him, extinguished any hope that Désiré might have had of marrying the lovely Ursule, for his father and he would never be able to prevail against the determination written in Zélie’s terrible blue eyes.

“Eh! but see here, Monsieur Dionis,” cried Crémière, nudged by his wife, “if the old man took the thing seriously and married his ward to Désiré whilst giving her the reversion to all his fortune, good-bye to the inheritance! And if he only lives another five years our uncle will have pretty well a million.”

“Never,” cried Zélie, “in my lifetime shall Désiré marry the daughter of a bastard, a charitygirl, picked up in a market-place! Bless me! my son is to represent the Minorets at his uncle’s death, and the Minorets can boast of five hundred years of good citizens. It is quite as good as the nobility. Make yourselves easy about that; Désiré will marry when we know what he can become in the Chamber of Deputies.”