A young woman would give me more children.

Well, Florentine doesn't cost me what a wife would; neither does she bore me; and she won't give me children to lessen your property." Camusot considered that Pere Cardot gave expression to a high sense of family duty in these words; he regarded him as an admirable father-in-law.
"He knows," thought he, "how to unite the interests of his children with the pleasures which old age naturally desires after the worries of business life." Neither the Cardots, nor the Camusots, nor the Protez knew anything of the ways of life of their aunt Clapart.

The family intercourse was restricted to the sending of notes of "faire part" on the occasion of deaths and marriages, and cards at the New Year.

The proud Madame Clapart would never have brought herself to seek them were it not for Oscar's interests, and because of her friendship for Moreau, the only person who had been faithful to her in misfortune.

She had never annoyed old Cardot by her visits, or her importunities, but she held to him as to a hope, and always went to see him once every three months and talked to him of Oscar, the nephew of the late respectable Madame Cardot; and she took the boy to call upon him three times during each vacation.