“A great disproportion of fortune would have terrified me, while the very moderation of his resources attracted me. And then his air of lordly decision, his promptness in arranging everything, was singularly attractive. In short, he was installed in the house as my future son-in-law, without my asking too curiously by what door he entered. I realized that there was something a little irregular in the affair, but my daughter was very happy; and when her mother said, ‘We must know more before we give up our daughter,’ I laughed at her, I was so certain that all was right. One day I spoke of him to M. Viéville, one of the huntsmen. “‘Indeed, I know nothing of the Comte Nadine,’ he said; ‘he strikes me as an excellent fellow. I know that he bears a celebrated name, and that he is well educated. But if I had a daughter involved, I should wish to know more than this. I should write, if I were you, to the Russian embassy; they can tell you everything there.’ “You suppose, of course, that I went to the embassy. That is just what I did not do; I was too careless, too blindly confident, too busy. I have never been able in my whole life to do what I wished, for I have never had any time; my whole existence has been too short for the half of what I have wished to do. Tormented by my wife on the subject of this additional information, I finished by lying, ‘Yes, yes, I went there; everything is satisfactory.’ Since then I remember the singular air of the comte each time he thought I was going to Paris; but at that time I saw nothing; I was absorbed in the plans that my children were making for their future happiness. They were to live with us three months in the year, and to spend the rest of the time in St. Petersburg, where Nadine was offered a government situation. My poor wife ended in sharing my joy and satisfaction. “The end of the winter passed in correspondence. The count’s papers were long in coming, his parents utterly refused their consent. At last the papers came—a package of hieroglyphics impossible to decipher,—certificates of birth, baptism, &c. That which particularly amused us was a sheet filled with the titles of my future son-in-law, Ivanovitch Nicolaevitch Stephanovitch. “‘Have you really as many names as that?’ said my poor child, laughing; ‘and I am only Madeleine Rivals.’ “There was at first some talk of the marriage taking place in Paris with great pomp, but Nadine reflected that it was not wise to brave the paternal authority on this point, so the ceremony took place at Etiolles, in the little church where to this very day are to be seen the records of an irreparable falsehood. How happy I was that morning as I entered the church with my daughter trembling on my arm, feeling that she owed all her happiness to me! “Then, after mass, breakfast at the house, and the departure of the bridal couple in a post-chaise—I can see them now as they drove away.