“Well, that very day I dined with two of my friends, a solicitor and a mill-owner. I don’t know how the conversation came to turn on marriages, and I told them, laughing, about the young lady with two and a half million francs.
“ ‘What sort of women are these women?’ the mill-owner said.
“The solicitor had seen several excellent marriages made in this way and he gave details; then he added, turning towards me:
“ ‘Why the devil don’t you look into that on your own behalf? Lord! two and a half million francs would make things easy for you!’
“We all three of us burst out laughing, and the talk turned on another subject.
“An hour later I went home.
“It was a cold night. I lived, besides, in an old house, one of those old provincial houses that are like mushroom beds. When I put my hand on the iron railing of the staircase, a cold shiver ran down my arm; I stretched out the other to find the wall and when I touched it, I felt another shiver strike through me, a shiver of damp this time; they met in my chest, and filled me with anguish, sadness and utter weariness of mind and body. A sudden memory woke in my mind and I murmured:
“ ‘God, if only I had two and a half million francs!’
“My bedroom was dismal, a Rouen bachelor’s bedroom, looked after by a servant who was cook as well as chambermaid. You can just imagine what it was like! a big curtainless bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, washstand, no fire. Clothes on the chairs, papers on the floor. I began to hum, to a music-hall tune for I sometimes went to such places:
“ ‘Deux millions,
Deux millions,
Sont bons
Avec cinq cent mille
Et femme gentille.’29
“To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought of the woman before, and I thought of her suddenly as I was creeping into my bed. I even thought of her so earnestly that I was a long time in falling asleep.
“When I opened my eyes next morning, before it was light, I recollected that I had to be at Darnétal at eight o’clock on important business. So I would have to get up at six—and it was freezing.
“ ‘Christ, two and a half millions!’
“I returned to my office about ten o’clock. It was full of a smell of rusty stove, old papers, the smell of papers relating to old lawsuits—nothing stinks as they do—and a smell of clerks, boots, frock-coats, shirts, hair and bodies, ill-washed winter-bound bodies, all heated to a temperature of sixty-five degrees.
“I ate my usual lunch, a burnt cutlet and a morsel of cheese. Then I set to work again.
“It was then that for the first time I thought really seriously of the young lady with two and a half millions. Who was she? Why should I not write? Why not find out about it?
“Well, to cut a long story short: for a fortnight the idea haunted, obsessed, tortured me. All my annoyances, all the little miseries I constantly suffered, until then unconsciously, almost without realising them, pricked me now like the stabbing of needles, and every one of these little sufferings made my thoughts leap to the young lady with two and a half millions.
“I began at last to imagine the story of her life. When you want a thing to be, you think of it as being just what you wish it were.
“Of course, it was not very usual for a young girl of good family, possessed of so attractive a dowry, to seek a husband by way of a newspaper advertisement. However, this particular girl might be honourable and unfortunate.
“From the first, this fortune of two and a half million francs had not dazzled me by any sense of fabulous wealth. We are used, we people who are always reading offers of this kind, to matrimonial propositions accompanied by six, eight, ten or even twelve millions. The twelve-million figure is even quite common. It attracts. I’m quite aware that we hardly credit the reality of these promises. But they do accustom our minds to the contemplation of these fantastic figures; to a certain extent they do induce our nodding credulity to accept as reasonable the prodigious sums of money they represent, and lead us to consider a dowry of two and a half million francs as very possible and probable.
“Suppose a young lady, the illegitimate daughter of a parvenu and a lady’s maid, inheriting unexpectedly from the father, had learned at the same time the disgrace of her birth, and to avoid revealing it to any man who might fall in love with her was trying to get into touch with strangers by a very customary medium, which did in itself imply almost a confession of dubious antecedents.
“My supposition was a stupid one. But I clung to it. Men of my profession, notaries, ought never to read novels—and I have read them.
“So I wrote in my professional capacity in the name of a client, and I waited.
“Five days later, about three o’clock in the afternoon, I was working hard in my office when the head clerk announced:
“ ‘Mlle. Chantefrise.’
“ ‘Ask her to come in.’
“Thereupon a woman about thirty years old appeared, rather stout, dark, and with an embarrassed air.
“ ‘Please sit down, madame.’
“She sat down and murmured:
“ ‘I’ve come, sir.’
“ ‘But, madame, I haven’t the honour to know you.’
“ ‘I’m the person you wrote to.’
“ ‘About a marriage?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘Ah, just so.’
“ ‘I have come myself, because these things are best arranged personally.’
“ ‘I agree with you, madame. So you wish to marry?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘You have parents?’
“She hesitated, lowered her glance, and stammered:
“ ‘No. … My mother … and my father … are dead.’
“I started. So I had guessed right … and a sudden swift sympathy woke in my heart for this poor creature. I did not insist, in order to spare her sensitiveness, and I went on:
“ ‘Your fortune is quite net?’
“This time she answered without hesitating:
“ ‘Yes.’
“I regarded her attentively, and honestly she didn’t displease me, although
