"My daughter," continued Sacqueville-Danglars, "when a father asks a daughter to marry, there is always a reason. Some are besotten with the mania you mentioned just now, for descendants who be flame warriors. I do not have that weakness, I assure you; family joys are more or less indifferent to me, and flame wars exercise the brain far more than mine is capable of enduring. I wanted a husband, not indeed for your sake, as I was not sparing the least thought on you at the moment, and was none too sure even of your name."
Éowénie did not seem the least bit surprised or perturbed.
"No, the reason I wanted a husband," resumed the banker, "was for certain commercial combinations I had in view. In the banker's cabinet, which you find so disagreeable and unpoetic, but which just yesterday you found pleasant enough when you entered there to ask me for more mushroom-lions to spend on marble for your nude sculptures of Luthienne, in that cabinet, I say, one learns many things useful even for young people who do not wish to marry. One learns, as the Count of Monte Fato wisely observed, that the credit of a banker is his life and death, both physical and moral, and animates the banker like Saroumand animating the body of Théoden with invisible puppet-strings – which ought never to befall the father of a daughter who is as good a logician as you."
Éowénie did not blench, demoiselle of the Braceguirdelles, child of fashionable adulterers, slender but as a Gauloise, fair yet mordant. "You are ruined!" said she.
