"The only service the poor woman can render me is to die as soon as she can; she would be rather a sorry figure at my marriage with Mademoiselle de Soulanges.
The less my family is seen, the better my position.

You can easily understand that I should like to bury the name of Bridau under all the monuments in Pere-Lachaise.

My brother irritates me by bringing the name into publicity.

You are too knowing not to see the situation as I do.
Look at it as if it were your own: if you were a deputy, with a tongue like yours, you would be as much feared as Chauvelin; you would be made Comte Bixiou, and director of the Beaux-Arts.

Once there, how should you like it if your grandmother Descoings were to turn up?
Would you want that worthy woman, who looked like a Madame Saint-Leon, to be hanging on to you?
Would you give her an arm in the Tuileries, and present her to the noble family you were trying to enter?
Damn it, you'd wish her six feet under ground, in a leaden night-gown.