"My friend, I tell you again, if you make this marriage, you will make a fool of yourself."
Robineau glared at his friend with eyes like an angry turkey-cock's, and dropped his hand, saying:
"My friend, as to making a fool of myself, I don't need your advice. I don't make love to goatherds, but I will marry whomever I please."
"Marry the devil, if you choose!" said Alfred, abruptly leaving the gallery.
"I will not marry the devil, but I will marry Mademoiselle Cornélie," said Robineau, striding with a determined air toward the garden.--"Ah! so she doesn't love me! I shall make a fool of myself!" he said to himself as he hurried toward the stable. "I see how it is.--Parbleu! it is easy to guess: Monsieur Alfred would like to steal Mademoiselle de la Pincerie away from me, and that is why he tries to dissuade me from this marriage. But the trick is too clumsy; to deprive him of all hope, I will hasten to the marquis's house, and I will not leave him until he has promised me his daughter's hand."
Robineau called the coachman and the groom, and ordered the horse to be harnessed to the char-à-bancs. Monsieur Férulus came at that moment to inquire for Monsieur de la Roche-Noire's health, and to inform him that breakfast was served. Robineau reflected that he had time for breakfast before going to ask for Mademoiselle Cornélie's hand. So he accompanied his librarian to the dining-room, and while breakfasting, said to him:
"Monsieur Férulus, I am going to be married very soon."
Monsieur Férulus made a wry face, because the life he was leading at the château was very agreeable to him, and he instantly foresaw that the arrival of a mistress would lessen the importance of his duties, that he would no longer be allowed to order the dinner and to decide how long they should remain at table. However, as Robineau had said it with a very determined air and as it was easy to see in his eyes that he expected congratulations, Monsieur Férulus tried to turn his grimace into a smile, and replied in a honeyed tone:
"Monseigneur, marriage is an institution which dates back to the earliest period of antiquity. People have always married, even before the days of notaries and municipal officers; to marry is to follow the decrees of Providence, and it was because they refused to marry that the people of Sodom were burned. Marry, therefore, monseigneur; great men have always had much inclination for marriage; Hercules, in a single night, married forty-nine daughters of Thespius, King of Boeotia; and if we are to believe Dion Cassius, Cæsar put forth a decree which declared him the husband of all the women in Rome, when he chose to avail himself of it. Ah! what fellows Cæsar and Hercules were! But now a man can marry but one wife at once; and indeed, I think that's enough.--May I know, monsieur, who the party is upon whom your eyes have fallen?"