As for marriage, that is easy to prevent.

Desire there has only got to hold out a finger to the girl; she's sure to prefer a handsome young man, cock of the walk in Nemours, to an old one." "Mother," said Desire to Zelie's ear, as much allured by the millions as by Ursula's beauty, "If I married her we should get the whole property." "Are you crazy ?--you, who'll some day have fifty thousand francs a year and be made a deputy! As long as I live you never shall cut your throat by a foolish marriage.

Seven hundred thousand francs, indeed! Why, the mayor's only daughter will have fifty thousand a year, and they have already proposed her to me--" This reply, the first rough speech his mother had ever made to him, extinguished in Desire's breast all desire for a marriage with the beautiful Ursula; for his father and he never got the better of any decision once written in the terrible blue eyes of Zelie Minoret.
"Yes, but see here, Monsieur Dionis," cried Cremiere, whose wife had been nudging him, "if the good man took the thing seriously and married his goddaughter to Desire, giving her the reversion of all the property, good-by to our share in it; if he lives five years longer uncle may be worth a million." "Never!" cried Zelie, "never in my life shall Desire marry the daughter of a bastard, a girl picked up in the streets out of charity.

My son will represent the Minorets after the death of his uncle, and the Minorets have five hundred years of good bourgeoisie behind them.

That's equal to the nobility.