set out for Bucharest. During her absence abroad he has come into a legacy: he is well off. Marie tells him her tragedy and the good fellow marries her and . . . and even adopts her son, who is born three months later, as his own.
You can't paint cruel portraits of such good people as that. And so I shall not go on painting Jean Damour. Besides, he dies after ten years of a happy and peaceful life with his wife and his adopted son Jean.
VI
Marie Damour, née Delestre, now a young widow in Paris possessed of a comfortable fortune, reads in the papers that Prince Basile Chalcondylas has arrived. He is her seducer of ten years ago! How could her thoughts do other than fly to him? Mixed thoughts, it is true, thoughts which exert a certain influence, especially when Marie learns incidentally that Basile, who is now just turned thirty, two years older than herself, is a ruined man, without even being able to boast that he is the author of his own ruin: the trips to Vienna, the idylls at the hunting-box had already brought the ruin about; and on the death of his princely parents Basile was left without a penny. He is now looking out for a rich wife. . . .
Marie calls on the prince at his hotel. He does not refuse to see her and the interview is even pleasurable. Basile admits that he is looking for a rich wife, the daughter of some American millionaire. But will he find her? He confesses his doubts to Marie. His health has gone snap; for that matter, you can see as much by looking at him. Though he is young in years, it is not only his purse that has suffered. In a word, for all his princely title, he is no great catch as a husband, as he himself honestly admits. My readers know that I appreciate these little flashes of honest illumination which fall upon my cruel portraits.
But Marie, after those mixed thoughts of hers, has made up her mind about what she will propose to Basile. Look at her: she is not a transatlantic millionairess, but she has a very pretty income. She is the last woman to make herself a nuisance to Prince Basile, but, if he consented to marry her and acknowledge their son, she would be prepared to give him a handsome allowance, an allowance big enough to enable him to vegetate in a bachelor's flat in Paris or at
