Honoré Balzac - Cousin Pons

On the way from the Rue de Normandie to the Rue de Richelieu, Pons drew from the abstracted Schmucke the details of the story of the modern prodigal son, for whom Death had killed the fatted innkeeper. Pons, but newly reconciled with his nearest relatives, was immediately smitten with a desire to make a match between Fritz Brunner and Cecile de Marville. Chance ordained that the notary was none other than Berthier, old Cardot’s son-in-law and successor, the sometime second clerk with whom Pons had been wont to dine.

“Ah! M. Berthier, you here!” he said, holding out a hand to his host of former days.

“We have not had the pleasure of seeing you at dinner lately; how is it?” returned the notary. “My wife has been anxious about you. We saw you at the first performance of The Devil’s Betrothed , and our anxiety became curiosity?”

“Old folk are sensitive,” replied the worthy musician; “they make the mistake of being a century behind the times, but how can it be helped? It is quite enough to represent one century – they cannot entirely belong to the century which sees them die.”

“Ah!” said the notary, with a shrewd look, “one cannot run two centuries at once.”

“By the by,” continued Pons, drawing the young lawyer into a corner, “why do you not find some one for my cousin Cecile de Marville – ”

“Ah! why – ?” answered Berthier. “In this century, when luxury has filtered down to our very porters’ lodges, a young fellow hesitates before uniting his lot with the daughter of a President of the Court of Appeal in Paris if she brings him only a hundred thousand francs. In the rank of life in which Mlle. de Marville’s husband would take, the wife was never yet known that did not cost her husband three thousand francs a year; the interest on a hundred thousand francs would scarcely find her in pin-money. A bachelor with an income of fifteen or twenty thousand francs can live on an entre-sol; he is not expected to cut any figure; he need not keep more than one servant, and all his surplus income he can spend on his amusements; he puts himself in the hands of a good tailor, and need not trouble any further about keeping up appearances. Far-sighted mothers make much of him; he is one of the kings of fashion in Paris.

“But a wife changes everything. A wife means a properly furnished house,” continued the lawyer; “she wants the carriage for herself; if she goes to the play, she wants a box, while the bachelor has only a stall to pay for; in short, a wife represents the whole of the income which the bachelor used to spend on himself. Suppose that husband and wife have thirty thousand francs a year between them – practically, the sometime bachelor is a poor devil who thinks twice before he drives out to Chantilly. Bring children on the scene – he is pinched for money at once.

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