Three days before the marriage, M. Bonnivet informed the family that the colonel had come into his office to ask for a conference about the contract. He had scarcely cast his eyes on the sheet of stamped paper, when Rrrrip! it was in pieces in the fireplace. "Mister Note-scratcher," he said, "do me the honor of beginning your _chef-d'oeuvre_ over again. The granddaughter of Fougas does not marry with an annuity of eight thousand francs. Nature and Friendship give her a million. Here it is!" Thereupon he took from his pocket a bank check for a million, paced the study proudly, making his boots creak, and threw a thousand-franc note on a clerk's desk, crying in his clearest tones: "Children of the Law! Here's something to drink the health of the Emperor and the Grand Army with!" The Renault family strongly remonstrated against this liberality. Clementine, on being told of it by her intended, had a long discussion, in the presence of Mlle. Sambucco, with the young and terrible grandpapa; she tried to impress upon him that he was but twenty-four years old, that he would be getting married some day, and that his property belonged to his future family. "I do not wish," said she, "that your children should accuse me of having robbed them. Keep your millions for my little uncles and aunts!" But for once, Fougas would not yield an inch. "Are you mocking me?" he said to Clementine. "Do you think that I will be guilty of the folly of marrying now? I do not promise you to live like a monk of La Trappe, but at my age, a man put together like I am can find enough to talk to around the garrisons without marrying anybody. Mars does not borrow the torch of Hymen to light the little aberrations of Venus! Why does man ever tie himself in matrimonial bonds?... For the sake of being a father. I am one already, in the comparative degree, and in a year, if our brave Leon does a man's part, I shall assume the superlative. Great-grandfather! That's a lovely position for a trooper twenty-five years old! At forty-five or fifty, I shall be great-great-grandfather. At seventy ... the French language has no more words to express what I shall become! But we can order one from those babblers of the Academy! Are you afraid that I'll want for anything in my old age? I have my pay, in the first place, and my officer's cross. When I reach the years of Anchises or Nestor, I will have my halt-pay. Add to all this the two hundred and fifty thousand francs from the king of Prussia, and you shall see that I have not only bread, but all essential fixings in the bargain, up to the close of my career. Moreover, I have a perpetual grant, for which your husband has paid in advance, in the Fontainebleau cemetery. With all these possessions, and simple tastes, one is sure not to eat up one's resources!"