|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: to Solonet's conditions, "Questa coda non e di questo gatto," were
cried aloud in her mind by that voice of memory. In spite of her
incapacity for business, Madame Evangelista's shrewdness told her:--
"If so clever a notary as Mathias was pacified, it must have been that
he saw compensation at the cost of SOME ONE."
That some one could not be Paul, as she had blindly hoped. Could it be
that her daughter's fortune was to pay the costs of war? She resolved
to demand explanations on the tenor of the contract, not reflecting on
the course she would have to take in case she found her interests
seriously compromised. This day had so powerful an influence on Paul
de Manerville's conjugal life that it is necessary to explain certain
| 
