Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/213

 PART SECOND THE MINORET INHERITANCE

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The action commenced with an arrangement so often employed in ancient as well as in modern literature, that nobody would have believed in its effects, in 1829, had it not been a question of an old Bretonne, a Kergarouët, a refugee! But, let us hasten to acknowledge, that in 1829, the nobility had recovered in morals a little of the ground lost in politics. Moreover, the feeling which governs the relatives from the moment there is a question of matrimonial relations is an imperishable feeling, very closely bound up in the existence of civilized society and imbibed into the family spirit. It prevails in Geneva as in Vienna, as in Nemours, where Zélie Levrault but lately refused her consent to her son’s marriage with the daughter of a bastard. Nevertheless, all social law has its exceptions. And so Savinien was considering how to bend his mother’s pride before Ursule’s innate nobleness. The struggle began on the spot As soon as Savinien was (187)