“Where is that money?”
“A friend will send it to me.”
The old man dropped his fork at the sound of the word “friend,” not out of irony or surprise; his face expressed his grief at finding Paul under the influence of a delusion, for his eye saw a void where the Count perceived a solid plank.
“I have been in a notary’s office more than fifty years,” said he, “and I never knew a ruined man who had friends willing to lend him money.”
“You do not know de Marsay. At this minute, while I speak to you, I am perfectly certain that he has sold out of the funds if it was necessary, and tomorrow you will receive a bill of exchange for fifty thousand crowns.”
“I only hope so.—But then could not this friend have set your affairs straight? You could have lived quietly at Lanstrac for five or six years on Madame la Comtesse’s income.”
“And would an assignment have paid fifteen hundred thousand francs of debts, of which my wife’s share was five hundred and fifty thousand?”
“And how, in four years, have you managed to owe fourteen hundred and fifty thousand francs?”
“Nothing can be plainer, my good friend. Did I not make the diamonds a present to my wife? Did I not spend the hundred and fifty thousand francs that came to us from the sale of Madame Evangelista’s house in redecorating my house in Paris? Had I not to pay the price of the land we purchased, and of the legal business of my marriage contract? Finally, had I not to sell Natalie’s forty thousand francs a year in the funds to pay for d’Auzac and Saint-Froult? We sold at 87, so I was in debt about two hundred thousand francs within a month of my marriage.
“An income was left of sixty-seven thousand francs, and we have regularly spent two hundred thousand francs a year beyond it. To these nine hundred thousand francs add certain moneylenders’ interest, and you will easily find it a million.”
“Brrrr,” said the old lawyer. “And then?”
“Well, I wished at once to make up the set of jewels for my wife, of which she already had the pearl necklace and the Discreto clasp—a family jewel—and her mother’s earrings. I paid a hundred thousand francs for a diadem of wheatears. There you see eleven hundred thousand francs. Then I owe my wife the whole of her fortune, amounting to three hundred and fifty-six thousand francs settled on her.”
“But then,” said Mathias, “if Madame la Comtesse had pledged her diamonds, and you your securities, you would have, by my calculations, three hundred thousand with which to pacify your creditors—”
“When a man is down, Mathias; when his estates are loaded with mortgages; when his wife is the first creditor for her settlement; when, to crown all, he is exposed to having writs against him for notes of hand to the tune of a hundred thousand francs—to be paid off, I hope, by good prices at the sales—nothing can be done. And the cost of conveyancing!”
“Frightful!” said the lawyer.
“The distraint has happily taken the form of a voluntary sale, which will mitigate the flare.”
“And you are selling Bellerose with the wines of 1825 in the cellars?”
“I cannot help myself.”
“Bellerose is worth six hundred thousand francs.”
“Natalie will buy it in by my advice.”
“Sixteen thousand francs in ordinary years—and such a season as 1825! I will run Bellerose up to seven hundred thousand francs myself, and each of the farms up to a hundred and twenty thousand.”
“So much the better; then I can clear myself if my house in the town fetches two hundred thousand.”
“Solonet will pay a little more for it; he has a fancy for it. He is retiring on a hundred odd thousand a year, which he has made in gambling in trois-six. He has sold his business for three hundred thousand francs, and is marrying a rich mulatto. God knows where she got her money, but they say she has millions. A notary gambling in trois-six! A notary marrying a mulatto! What times these are! It was he, they say, who looked after your mother-in-law’s investments.”
“She has greatly improved Lanstrac, and taken good care of the land; she has regularly paid her rent.”
“I should never have believed her capable of behaving so.”
“She is so kind and devoted.—She always paid Natalie’s debts when she came to spend three months in Paris.”
“So she very well might, she lives on Lanstrac,” said Mathias. “She! Turned thrifty! What a miracle! She has just bought the estate of Grainrouge, lying between Lanstrac and Grassol, so that if she prolongs the avenue from Lanstrac down to the highroad you can drive a league and a half through your own grounds. She paid a hundred thousand francs down for Grainrouge, which is worth a thousand crowns a year in cash rents.”
“She is still handsome,” said Paul. “Country life keeps her young. I will not go to take leave of her; she would bleed herself for me.”
“You would waste your time; she is gone to Paris. She probably arrived just as you left.”
“She has, of course, heard of the sale of the land, and has rushed to my assistance.—I have no right to complain of life. I am loved as well as any man can be in this world, loved by two women who vie with each other in their devotion to me. They were jealous of each other; the daughter reproached her mother for being too fond of me, and the mother found fault with her daughter for her extravagance. This affection has been my ruin. How can a
