"A woman who makes her dresses last five years! That speaks for itself, that's quite enough. I can picture the dowry hoarded up in a stocking. The money would be in land at two and a half per cent; repairs, taxes, lawsuits, farmers who don't pay their rent, a father-in-law who makes over to you unsalable property. No, no, I'm not quite young enough. I want to get married, but I mean to marry well. Leave me to manage it, and you'll see. You can make your mind easy; I'm not the sort to be taken in with: '_She has such beautiful hair and she is so devoted to her mother!_' You see, mamma, I've thought a great deal about marriage, although you may not imagine I have. The most difficult thing to get in this world, the thing we pay the most dearly for, snatch from each other, fight for, the thing we only obtain by force of genius or by luck, by meanness, privations, by wild efforts, perseverance, resolution, energy, audacity or work, is money--isn't that so? Now money means happiness and the honour of being rich, it means enjoyment, and it brings with it the respect and esteem of the million. Well, I have discovered that there is a way of getting it, straightforwardly and promptly, without any fatigue, without difficulty and without genius, quite simply, naturally, quickly and honourably; and this way is by marriage. Another thing I have discovered is that there is no need to be remarkably handsome nor astonishingly intelligent in order to make a rich marriage; the only thing necessary is to will it, to will it coolly, calmly and with all one's force of will-power, to stake all one's chances on that card; in fact to look upon getting married as one's object in life, one's future career. I see that in playing that game it is no more difficult to make an extraordinary marriage than an ordinary one, to get a dowry of fifty thousand pounds than one of five thousand; it is merely a question of cool-headedness and luck; the stake is the same in both cases. In our times when a good tenor can marry an income of thirty thousand pounds arithmetic becomes a thing of the past. All this is what I have wanted to explain to you, and I am sure you will understand me." Henri Mauperin took his mother's hand in his as he spoke. She was fairly aghast with surprise, admiration, and a sentiment very near akin to respect. "Don't you worry yourself," continued her son. "I shall marry well--better even perhaps than you dream of." As soon as his mother had gone Henri took up his pen and, continuing the article he had commenced for the _Revue economique_, wrote: "The trajectory of humanity is a spiral and not a circle----" VIII