In December the barrister came to plead at Chauny. He presented a letter of introduction to Dr. and Mme. Seron. They, unlike the aunts, received him most cordially. Having been invited to dinner, he told Juliette that, influenced by her arguments he had become less sceptical. She did not believe him. She was vaguely conscious of some ulterior motive in his words. She felt ill at ease and left the salon early. On the morrow her grandmother announced that M. Lamessine had asked for her hand in marriage, that his treatment of the important matter of settlements was satisfactory, and that he was willing for Mme. Seron to spend every winter with her granddaughter and her husband when they should go to live in Paris. But Juliette was not the kind of young person thus to be married out of hand and merely to please her grandmother. She was thunderstruck at such an announcement. She would not dream, she protested, of marrying a man who was twice her age. In vain did Mme. Seron plead that M. Lamessine was _très bien_, that his coming was providential, that resembling feature for feature one of the heroes of her favourite novelist Balzac, he could not fail to be the most suitable of husbands. “You must admit that I am right, Juliette,” she said, and forthwith she took down the volume in question and read the description. But even this striking likeness failed to reconcile her recalcitrant granddaughter to the match. Juliette appealed to her grandfather and to her old friend Blondeau, to save her from so uncongenial a mating, but to no purpose, for Mme. Seron had already won them over to her side. There was, however, one member of the family who would be less easy to convince. And Juliette, as was her custom, called in Blérancourt to redress the balance at Chauny. Dr. Lambert, knowing more about the proposed bridegroom than his mother-in-law, was horrified at the idea of his marrying his daughter. A few days later when he and his wife came over to Chauny, he was aghast to find how far things had gone. He would, he declared, never give his consent to the marriage.