“Not very. Simply stupid. But he is, as you know, good-looking, and, what is more to the purpose, of good family and very well off. He is heir to his uncle, and so will one day have two of the finest châteaux in France, each representing two millions of money. The paternal millions have grown thin since the old gentleman’s death, but the uncle’s will replenish them soon; he cannot last long, he is in bad health and seventy-six years of age. So the marquis is safe to be at the head of a very handsome fortune by the time he has settled down.” “Meanwhile?” said Berthe, pretending not to see the drift of these preliminaries. “Meanwhile, his mother is very anxious to marry him. She spoke confidentially to me about it, and begged me to look out for a wife for her. I promised I would do my best. Like all mothers-in-law, she wants perfection. Sixteen quarterings _en règle_, that is understood; equal fortune of course; but, although Edgar’s present and future fortune is nominally four millions, as he has compromised one million, she would count it as not existing, and only exact three millions with his wife. This is carrying on matters on a grand scale?” And Madame de Beaucœur waited for Berthe’s approval. “How did he compromise the odd million?” inquired Berthe evasively. “_Mais, mon Dieu!_ One must not examine too closely!” replied Madame de Beaucœur, smiling at the _naïveté_ of the question. “And besides these?” said Berthe. “The girl must be pretty, and well brought up. I must tell you, my dear,” continued the lady, with a sort of diffidence as if conscious that she was about to state some ludicrous or damaging fact, “that the mother-in-law is very pious, and she holds very much to having a daughter-in-law who is so also. Otherwise she is the best woman in the world, very intelligent, and will do all in her power to make her son’s wife happy.” “And the son himself? You have not said much about him. How far does he pledge himself to the same end?” “Ah! there is the difficulty!” said Madame de Beaucœur. “Unfortunately he won’t hear of being married at all. The moment his mother speaks of it, he either turns it off in a joke, or, if she insists, he gets into a tantrum, flies out of the house, and she doesn’t see him for a week. You can fancy how this complicates the matter for her, poor woman!” “It certainly is a complication,” observed Berthe. “And it makes it all the more incumbent on us to try and help her,” resumed the envoy. “So I have come to enlist your offices in her behalf. I promised her she might count on you, _chère amie_. Did I promise too much?” “If you promised her that I would marry her son for her, _nolens volens_, you decidedly did,” answered Berthe, laughing ironically.