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ging his shoulders].
- Old fossil Highnesses who make it
- their pride to keep plebeian blots
- excluded from their line's escutcheon.
MR. COTTON
- Then nothing came of the affair?
MONSIEUR BALLON
- The family opposed the marriage?
PEER
- Far from it!
MONSIEUR BALLON
- Ah!
PEER [with forbearance].
- You understand
- that certain circumstances made for
- their marrying us without delay.
- But, truth to tell, the whole affair
- was, first to last, distasteful to me.
- I'm finical in certain ways,
- and like to stand on my own feet.
- And when my father-in-law came out
- with delicately veiled demands
- that I should change my name and station,
- and undergo ennoblement,
- with much else that was most distasteful,
- not to say quite inacceptable,-
- why then I gracefully withdrew,
- point-blank declined his ultimatum-
- and so renounced my youthful bride.
[Drums on the table with a devout air
