'Ah, my dear; that's where I think it is that you are dreaming, and
will go on dreaming till you've lost yourself, unless your aunt and
I interfere to prevent it. Love is all very well. Of course you
must love your husband. But it doesn't do for young women to let
themselves be run away with by romantic ideas;--it doesn't, indeed,
my dear. I've heard of young women who've fallen in love with
statues and men in armour out of poetry, and grand fellows that they
put into books, and there they've been waiting, waiting, waiting,
till some man in armour should come for them. The man in armour
doesn't come. But sometimes there comes somebody who looks like a
man in armour, and that's the worst of all.'

'I don't want a man in armour, Uncle Michel.'

'No, I daresay not. But the truth is, you don't know what you want.
The proper thing for a young woman is to get herself well settled,
if she has the opportunity. There are people who think so much of
money, that they'd give a child almost to anybody as long as he was
rich. I shouldn't like to see you marry a man as old as myself.'

'I shouldn't care how old he was if I loved him.'

'Nor to a curmudgeon,' continued Michel, not caring to notice the
interruption, 'nor to an ill-tempered fellow, or one who gambled, or
one who would use bad words to you. But here is a young man who has
no faults at all.'

'I hate people who have no faults,' said Marie.