"Manuring their fields," they called it, the improvident, money-hungry nobles of 18th century France, as they held their aristocratic noses and married their sons and daughters to members of a class they despised. A new roof for the château, shore up its crumbling walls? Seek out a wealthy bourgeois. The Marquis de Vau-Gency has married his oldest son to the daughter of a tax collector, and when a wealthy financier asks for Adele's hand? No matter that he is a man of whom, in the Marquise's words, 'one has heard everything and consequently knows nothing," the consent is willingly given. And how does Adele feel about this? Who cares? This is her story.