for my dowry; if somebody
presses my hand in a dance, it is sure to be some provincial fop; as soon
as I appear anywhere, I excite a murmur of admiration; but nobody speaks
low, in my ear, a word that makes my heart beat. I hear impertinent men
praising me in loud tones, a couple of feet away, and never a look of
humbly sincere adoration meets mine. Still I have an ardent soul full of
life, and I am not, by any means, only a pretty doll to be shown about, to
be made to dance at a ball, to be dressed by a maid in the morning and
undressed at night--beginning the whole thing over again the next day."

That is what Mademoiselle Godeau had many times said to herself; and there
were hours when that thought inspired her with so gloomy a feeling that
she remained mute and almost motionless for a whole day. When Croisilles
wrote her, she was in just such a fit of ill-humor. She had just been
taking her chocolate and was deep in meditation, stretched upon a lounge,
when her maid entered and handed her the letter with a mysterious air. She
looked at the address, and not recognizing the handwriting, fell again to
musing.

The maid then saw herself forced to explain what it was, which she did
with a rather disconcerted air, not being at all sure how the young lady
would take the matter. Mademoiselle Godeau listened without moving, then
opened the letter, and cast only a glance at it; she at once asked for a
sheet of paper, and nonchalantly wrote these few words:

"No, sir, I assure you I am not proud. If you had only a hundred thousand
crowns, I would willingly marry you."

Such was the reply which the maid at once took to Croisilles, who gave her
another louis for her trouble.

V

A hundred thousand crowns are not found "in a donkey's hoof-print," and if
Croisilles had been suspicious he might have thought in reading
Mademoiselle Godeau's letter that she was either crazy or laughing at him.
He thought neither, for he only saw in it that his darling Julie loved
him, and that he must have a hundred thousand crowns, and he dreamed from
that moment of nothing but trying to secure them.

He possessed two hundred louis in cash, plus a house which, as I have
said, might be worth about thirty thousand francs. What was to be done?
How was he to go about transfiguring these thirty-four thousand francs, at
a jump, into three hundred thousand. The first idea which came into the
mind of the young man was to find some way of staking hi