bill of exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand francs."
"I hope I may. If that be so, cannot your friend settle your

difficulties here? You could live quietly at Lanstrac for five or six
years on your wife's income, and so recover yourself."

"No assignment or economy on my part could pay off fifteen hundred
thousand francs of debt, in which my wife is involved to the amount of

five hundred and fifty thousand."
"You cannot mean to say that in four years you have incurred a million

and a half of debt?"
"Nothing is more certain, Mathias. Did I not give those diamonds to my

wife? Did I not spend the hundred and fifty thousand I received from
the sale of Madame Evangelista's house, in the arrangement of my house

in Paris? Was I not forced to use other money for the first payments
on that property demanded by the marriage contract? I was even forced

to sell out Natalie's forty thousand a year in the Funds to complete
the purchase of Auzac and Saint-Froult. We sold at eighty-seven,

therefore I became in debt for over two hundred thousand francs within
a month after my marriage. That left us only sixty-seven thousand

francs a year; but we spent fully three times as much every year. Add
all that up, together with rates of interest to usurers, and you will

soon find a million."
"Br-r-r!" exclaimed the old notary. "Go on. What next?"

"Well, I wanted, in the first place, to complete for my wife that set
of jewels of which she had the pearl necklace clasped by the family

diamond, the 'Discreto,' and her mother's ear-rings. I paid a hundred
thousand francs for a coronet of diamond wheat-ears. There's eleven

hundred thousand. And now I find I owe the fortune of my wife, which
amounts to three hundred and sixty-six thousand francs of her 'dot.'"

"But," said Mathias, "if Madame la comtesse had given up her diamonds
and you had pledged your income you could have pacified your creditors

and have paid them off in time."
"When a man is down, Mathias, when his property is covered with

mortgages, when his wife's claims take precedence of his creditors',
and when that man has notes out for a hundred thousand francs which he

must pay (and I hope I can do so out of the increased value of my
property here), what you propose is not possible."

"This is dreadful!" cried Mathias; "would you sell Belle-Rose with the
vintage of 1825 still in the cellars?"

"I cannot help myself."
"Belle-Rose is worth six hundred thousand francs."

"Natalie will buy it in; I have advised her to do so."
"I might push the price to seven hundred thousand, and the farms are

worth a hundred thousand each."
"Then if the house in Bordeaux can be sold for two hundred thousand--"

"Solonet will give more than that; he wants it. He is retiring with a
handsome property made by gambling on the Funds. He has sold his

practice for three hundred thousand francs, and marries a mulatto
woman. God knows how she got her money, but they say it amounts to

millions. A notary gambling in stocks! a notary marrying a black
woman! What an age! It is said that he speculates for your mother-in-

law with her funds."
"She has greatly improved Lanstrac and taken great pains with its

cultivation. She has amply repaid me for the use of it."
"I shouldn't have thought her capable of that."

"She is so kind and so devoted; she has always paid Natalie's debts
during the three months she spent with us every year in Paris."

"She could well afford to do so, for she gets her living out of
Lanstrac," said Mathias. "She! grown economical! what a miracle! I am

told she has just bought the domain of Grainrouge between Lanstrac and
Grassol; so that if the Lanstrac avenue were extended to the high-

road, you would drive four and a half miles through your own property
to reach the house. She paid one hundred thousand francs down for

Grainrouge."
"She is as handsome as ever," said Paul; "country life preserves her

freshness; I don't mean to go to Lanstrac and bid her good-bye; her
heart would bleed for me too much."

"You would go in vain; she is now in Paris. She probably arrived there
as you left."

"No doubt she had heard of the sale of my property and came to help
me. I have no complaint to make of life, Mathias. I am truly loved,--

as much as any man ever could be here below; beloved by two women who
outdo each other in devotion; they are even jealous of each other; the

daughter blames the mother for loving me too much, and the mother
reproaches the daughter for what she calls her dissipations. I may say

that this great affection has been my ruin. How could I fail to
satisfy even the slightest caprice of a loving wife? Impossible to

restrain myself! Neither could I accept any sacrifice on her part. We
might certainly, as you say, live at Lanstrac, save my income, and

part with her diamonds, but I would rather go to India and work for a
fortune than tear my Natalie from the life she enjoys. So it was I who

proposed the separation as to property. Women are angels who ought not
to be mixed up in the sordid interests of life."

Old Mathias listened in doubt and amazement.
"You have no children, I think," he said.

"Fortunately, none," replied Paul.
"That is not my idea of marriage," remarked the old notary, naively.

"A wife ought, in my opinion, to share the good and evil fortunes of
her husband. I have heard that young married people who love like

lovers, do not want children? Is pleasure the only object of marriage?
I say that object should be the joys of family. Moreover, in this case

--I am afraid you will think me too much of notary--your marriage
contract made it incumbent upon you to have a son. Yes, monsieur le

comte, you ought to have had at once a male heir to consolidate that
entail. Why not? Madame Evangelista was strong and healthy; she had

nothing to fear in maternity. You will tell me, perhaps, that these
are the old-fashioned notions of our ancestors. But in those noble

families, Monsieur le comte, the legitimate wife thought it her duty
to bear children and bring them up nobly; as the Duchesse de Sully,

the wife of the great Sully, said, a wife is not an instrument of
pleasure, but the honor and virtue of her household."

"You don't know women, my good Mathias," said Paul. "In order to be
happy we must love them as they want to be loved. Isn't there

something brutal in at once depriving a wife of her charms, and
spoiling her beauty before she has begun to enjoy it?"

"If you had had children your wife would not have dissipated your
fortune; she would have stayed at home and looked after them."

"If you were right, dear friend," said Paul, frowning, "I should be
still more unhappy than I am. Do not aggravate my sufferings by

preaching to me after my fall. Let me go, without the pang of looking
backward to my mistakes."

The next day Mathias received a bill of exchange for one hundred and
fifty thousand francs from de Marsay.

"You see," said Paul, "he does not write a word to me. He begins by
obliging me. Henri's nature is the most imperfectly perfect, the most

illegally beautiful that I know. If you knew with what superiority
that man, still young, can rise above sentiments, above self-

interests, and judge them, you would be astonished, as I am, to find
how much heart he has."

Mathias tried to battle with Paul's determination, but he found it
irrevocable, and it was justified by so many cogent reasons that the

old man finally ceased his endeavors to retain his client.
It is seldom that vessels sail promptly at the time appointed, but on

this occasion, by a fateful circumstance for Paul, the wind was fair
and the "Belle-Amelie" sailed on the morrow, as expected. The quay was

lined with relations, and friends, and idle persons. Among them were
several who had formerly known Manerville. His disaster, posted on the