Your wife is to inherit the property of a maternal uncle, a gouty old fellow whom she humors, nurses, caresses, and muffles up; to say nothing of her father’s fortune. Caroline has always adored her uncle,--her uncle who trotted her on his knee, her uncle who--her uncle whom--her uncle, in short,--whose property is estimated at two hundred thousand. Further, your wife is well preserved, though her age has been the subject of mature reflection on the part of your son-in-law’s grandparents and other ancestors. After many skirmishes between the mothers-in-law, they have at last confided to each other the little secrets peculiar to women of ripe years. “How is it with you, my dear madame?” “I, thank heaven, have passed the period; and you?” “I really hope I have, too!” says your wife. “You can marry Caroline,” says Adolphe’s mother to your future son-in-law; “Caroline will be the sole heiress of her mother, of her uncle, and her grandfather.” 2.--As to yourself. You are also the heir of your maternal grandfather, a good old man whose possessions will surely fall to you, for he has grown imbecile, and is therefore incapable of making a will. You are an amiable man, but you have been very dissipated in your youth. Besides, you are fifty-nine years old, and your head is bald, resembling a bare knee in the middle of a gray wig. III.--A dowry of three hundred thousand. IV.--Caroline’s only sister, a little dunce of twelve, a sickly child, who bids fair to fill an early grave. V.--Your own fortune, father-in-law (in certain kinds of society they say _papa father-in-law_) yielding an income of twenty thousand, and which will soon be increased by an inheritance. VI.--Your wife’s fortune, which will be increased by two inheritances--from her uncle and her grandfather. In all, thus: Three inheritances and interest, 750,000 Your fortune, 250,000 Your wife’s fortune, 250,000 __________ Total, 1,250,000 which surely cannot take wing! Such is the autopsy of all those brilliant marriages that conduct their processions of dancers and eaters, in white gloves, flowering at the button-hole, with bouquets of orange flowers, furbelows, veils, coaches and coach-drivers, from the magistrate’s to the church, from the church to the banquet, from the banquet to the dance, from the dance to the nuptial chamber, to the music of the orchestra and the accompaniment of the immemorial pleasantries uttered by relics of dandies, for are there not, here and there in society, relics of dandies, as there are relics of English horses? To be sure, and such is the osteology of the most amorous intent. The majority of the relatives have had a word to say about this marriage. Those on the side of the bridegroom: “Adolphe has made a good thing of it.” Those on the side of the bride: