pretended enthusiasm.

"What a jest!" said Madame Mollot. "You can't really mean, my little
Cecile, that you are thinking of that stranger?"

"But the husband is always the stranger," interposed Olivier Vinet,
making a sign to Mademoiselle Beauvisage which she fully understood.

"Why shouldn't I think of him?" asked Cecile; "that isn't
compromising. Besides, he is, so these gentlemen say, either some
great speculator, or some great seigneur, and either would suit me. I
love Paris; and I want a house, a carriage, an opera-box, etc., in
Paris."

"That's right," said Vinet. "When people dream, they needn't refuse
themselves anything. If I had the pleasure of being your brother I
should marry you to the young Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, who seems to me a
lively young scamp who will make the money dance, and will laugh at
his mother's prejudices against the actors in the famous Simeuse
melodrama."

"It would be easier for you to make yourself prime-minister," said
Madame Marion. "There will never be any alliance between the
granddaughter of Grevin and the Cinq-Cygnes."

"Romeo came within an ace of marrying Juliet," remarked Achille
Pigoult, "and Mademoiselle is more beautiful than--"

"Oh! if you are going to quote operas and opera beauties!" said
Herbelot the notary, naively, having finished his game of whist.