French and Oriental Love in a Harem

"Capital!" added my aunt. "Well, André! How does it suit you?"

"Why, aunt," I said, laughing in my turn at their little dispute; "I

think my uncle may rely equally with you upon the pleasure it will give

me."

"All right, that's settled!" continued my aunt in an inimitable tone of

hilarity; "at seven o'clock punctually, my dear nephew, you will come

and fall in love."

My uncle took no more notice of this last ironical shaft than of the

rest, but occupied himself with selecting a cigar, remarking that what

he had were too dry. My aunt availed herself of the opportunity of

continuing her conversation with me.

"Between you and me," she said, "I may tell you that you are not much to

be pitied, for she is a charming girl, and you would really lose a good

deal by not making her acquaintance."

"I was only waiting for my uncle to decide the question."

"You must at any rate be grateful to him for letting you meet by

chance before your wedding-day," she continued.

"Oh, dear! one might think I wanted to marry them at a minute's notice!"

said my uncle at these words. "Just like a woman's exaggerations!

Perhaps you would have liked me to have introduced her to him before my

last voyage, when she was a lass of fourteen, thin, awkward, and

gawkish, as you all are at that age."

"Thanks; why don't you say monkeys while you are about it?" replied my

aunt with a curtsey.

But my uncle intended to make a speech of it, and continued: "Who would have left in his mind the disagreeable recollection of a

small, flat, angular creature, with arms like flutes, and hands and feet

as long as that!"

"Poor little creature! I shudder at the thought of it! However, in your

ineffable wisdom, you have fattened her up with mystery."

"Ta, ta, ta!" continued my uncle; "I have made a fine, healthy, solid

young woman of her, who promises to make just the right sort of wife for

André! And I maintain, in spite of your ideas on the subject, that I

have done well to bring them up at a distance from each other, in order

to preserve the freshness of their feelings, and avoid the necessity of

that awkward and painful transformation of the affections which is so

difficult for a couple who have grown up together and eaten their bread

and butter together as brats in the nursery. To-day they will find each

other just as they ought to before they become husband and wife. All the

rest of the business must be left to them. If they like each other very

much they will make a love-match, if not, a mariage de raison, which

is just as good."