"So, then, it is in your own empty head that this notion sprouted?"

"Yes. As I told you yesterday, I think Celeste can be more suitably married, and my intention is not to rob myself for a marriage of which I disapprove."

"_You_ disapprove! Upon my word! are we all to take madame's advice?"

"I know well," replied Madame Thuillier, "that I count for nothing in this house. So far as I am concerned, I have long accepted my position; but, when the matter concerns the happiness of a child I regard as my own--"

"Parbleu!" cried Brigitte, "you never knew how to have one; for, certainly, Thuillier--"

"Sister," said Madame Thuillier, with dignity, "I took the sacrament this morning, and there are some things I cannot listen to."

"There's a canting hypocrite for you!" cried Brigitte; "playing the saint, and bringing trouble into families! And you think to succeed, do you? Wait till Thuillier comes home, and he'll shake this out of you."

By calling in the marital authority in support of her own, Brigitte showed weakness before the unexpected resistance thus made to her inveterate tyranny. Madame Thuillier's calm words, which became every moment more resolute, baffled her completely, and she found no resource but insolence.

"A drone!" she cried; "a helpless good-for-nothing! who can't even pick up her own handkerchief! that thing wants to be mistress of this house!"

"I wish so little to be its mistress," said Madame Thuillier, "that last night I allowed you to silence me after the first words I said in behalf of Celeste. But I am mistress of my own property, and as I believe that Celeste will be wretched in this marriage, I keep it to use as may seem best to me."

"Your property, indeed!" said Brigitte, with a sneer.

"Yes, that which I received from my father and my mother, and which I brought as my 'dot' to Monsieur Thuillier."

"And pray who invested it, this property, and made it give you twelve thousand francs a year?"

"I have never asked you for any account of it," said Madame Thuillier, gently. "If it had been lost in the uses you made of it, you would never have heard a single word from me; but it has prospered, and it is just that I should have the benefit. It is not for myself that I reserve it."

"Perhaps not; if this is the course you take, it is not at all sure that you and I will go out of the same door long."

"Do you mean that Monsieur Thuillier will send me away? He must have reasons for doing that, and, thank G.o.d! I have been a wife above reproach."

"Viper! hypocrite! heartless creature!" cried Brigitte, coming to an end of her arguments.

"Sister," said Madame Thuillier, "you are in my apartment--"

"Am I, you imbecile?" cried the old maid, in a paroxysm of anger. "If I didn't restrain myself--"

And she made a gesture both insulting and threatening.

Madame Thuillier rose to leave the room.

"No! you shall not go out," cried Brigitte, pushing her down into her chair; "and till Thuillier comes home and decides what he will do with you you'll stay locked up here."

Just as Brigitte, her face on fire, returned to the room where she had left Madame Colleville, her brother came in. He was radiant.

"My dear," he said to the Megaera, not observing her fury, "everything is going on finely; the conspiracy of silence is broken; two papers, the 'National' and a Carlist journal, have copied articles from us, and there's a little attack in a ministerial paper."

"Well, all is not going on finely here," said Brigitte, "and if it continues, I shall leave the barrack."

"Whom are you angry with now?" asked Thuillier.

"With your insolent wife, who has made me a scene; I am trembling all over."

"Celeste make you a scene!" said Thuillier; "then it is the very first time in her life."

"There's a beginning to everything, and if you don't bring her to order--"

"But what was it about--this scene?"

"About madame's not choosing that la Peyrade should marry her G.o.ddaughter; and out of spite, to prevent the marriage, she refused to give anything in the contract."

"Come, be calm," said Thuillier, not disturbed himself, the admission of the "Echo" into the polemic making another Pangloss of him. "I'll settle all that."

"You, Flavie," said Brigitte, when Thuillier had departed to his wife, "you will do me the pleasure to go down to your own apartment, and tell Mademoiselle Celeste that I don't choose to see her now, because if she made me any irritating answer I might box her ears. You'll tell her that I don't like conspiracies; that she was left at liberty to choose Monsieur Ph.e.l.lion junior if she wanted him, and she did not want him; that the matter is now all arranged, and that if she does not wish to see her 'dot' reduced to what you are able to give her, which isn't as much as a bank-messenger could carry in his waistcoat pocket--"

"But, my dear Brigitte," interrupted Flavie, turning upon her at this impertinence, "you may dispense with reminding us in this harsh way of our poverty; for, after all, we have never asked you for anything, and we pay our rent punctually; and as for the 'dot,' Monsieur Felix Ph.e.l.lion is quite ready to take Celeste with no more than a bank-messenger could carry in his _bag_."

And she emphasized the last word by her way of p.r.o.nouncing it.

"Ha! so you too are going to meddle in this, are you?" cried Brigitte.

"Very good; go and fetch him, your Felix. I know, my little woman, that this marriage has never suited you; it IS disagreeable to be nothing more than a mother to your son-in-law."

Flavie had recovered the coolness she had lost for an instant, and without replying to this speech she merely shrugged her shoulders.

At this moment Thuillier returned; his air of beat.i.tude had deserted him.

"My dear Brigitte," he said to his sister, "you have a most excellent heart, but at times you are so violent--"

"Ho!" said the old maid, "am I to be arraigned on this side too?"

"I certainly do not blame you for the cause of the trouble, and I have just rebuked Celeste for her a.s.sumption; but there are proper forms that must be kept."

"Forms! what are you talking about? What forms have I neglected?"

"But, my dear friend, to raise your hand against your sister!"

"I, raise my hand against that imbecile? What nonsense you talk!"

"And besides," continued Thuillier, "a woman of Celeste's age can't be kept in prison."

"Your wife!--have I put her in prison?"

"You can't deny it, for I found the door of her room double-locked."

"Parbleu! all this because in my anger at the infamous things she was spitting at me I may have turned the key of the door without intending it."

"Come, come," said Thuillier, "these are not proper actions for people of our cla.s.s."