ags on so
long."

He spoke in this way in order to reassure Clotilde, whose growing
anxiety he observed. She looked at him, and she looked around her at La
Souleiade; her only care his happiness; her most ardent desire to live
here always, as she had lived in the past, to love him always in this
beloved solitude. And he, wishing to tranquilize her, recovered his fine
indifference; never having lived for money, he did not imagine that one
could suffer from the want of it.

"But I have some money!" he cried, at last. "What does Martine mean
by saying that we have not a sou left, and that we are going to die of
starvation!"

And he rose gaily, and made them both follow him saying:

"Come, come, I am going to show you some money. And I will give some of
it to Martine that she may make us a good dinner this evening."

Upstairs in his room he triumphantly opened his desk before them. It
was in a drawer of this desk that for years past he had thrown the money
which his later patients had brought him of their own accord, for he had
never sent them an account. Nor had he ever known the exact amount of
his little treasure, of the gold and bank bills mingled together in
confusion, from which he took the sums he required for his pocket money,
his experiments, his presents, and his alms. During the last few months
he had made frequent visits to his desk, making deep inroads into
its contents. But he had been so accustomed to find there the sums he
required, after years of economy during which he had spent scarcely
anything, that he had come to believe his savings inexhaustible.

He gave a satisfied laugh, then, as he opened the drawer, crying:

"Now you shall see! Now you shall see!"

And he was confounded, when, after searching among the heap of notes and
bills, he succeeded in collecting only a sum of 615 francs--two notes of
100 francs each, 400 francs in gold, and 15 francs in change. He shook
out the papers, he felt in every corner of the drawer, crying:

"But it cannot be! There was always money here before, there was a heap
of money here a few days ago. It must have been all those old bills that
misled me. I assure you that last week I saw a great deal of money. I
had it in my hand."

He spoke with such amusing good faith, his childlike surprise was so
sincere, that Clotilde could not keep from smiling. Ah, the poor master,
what a wretched business man he was! Then, as she observed Martine's
look of anguish, her u