friends, a
manufacturer, who sold him as much cloth and silk as he could pay for. The
whole of it, loaded upon a cart, was promptly taken on board. Croisilles,
delighted and full of hope, had himself written in large letters his name
upon the bales. He watched them being put on board with inexpressible joy;
the hour of departure soon came, and the vessel weighed anchor.

VI

I need not say that in this transaction, Croisilles had kept no money in
hand. His house was sold; and there remained to him, for his sole fortune,
the clothes he had on his back;--no home, and not a son. With the best
will possible, Jean could not suppose that his master was reduced to such
an extremity; Croisilles was not too proud, but too thoughtless to tell
him of it. So he determined to sleep under the starry vault, and as for
his meals, he made the following calculation; he presumed that the vessel
which bore his fortune would be six months before coming back to Havre;
Croisilles, therefore, not without regret, sold a gold watch his father
had given him, and which he had fortunately kept; he got thirty-six livres
for it. That was sufficient to live on for about six months, at the rate
of four sous a day. He did not doubt that it would be enough, and,
reassured for the present, he wrote to Mademoiselle Godeau to inform her
of what he had done. He was very careful in his letter not to speak of his
distress; he announced to her, on the contrary, that he had undertaken a
magnificent commercial enterprise, of the speedy and fortunate issue of
which there could be no doubt; he explained to her that La Fleurette, a
merchant-vessel of one hundred and fifty tons, was carrying to the Baltic
his cloths and his silks, and implored her to remain faithful to him for a
year, reserving to himself the right of asking, later on, for a further
delay, while, for his part, he swore eternal love to her.

When Mademoiselle Godeau received this letter she was sitting before the
fire, and had in her hand, using it as a screen, one of those bulletins
which are printed in seaports, announcing the arrival and departure of
vessels, and which also report disasters at sea. It had never occurred to
her, as one can well imagine, to take an interest in this sort of thing;
she had in fact never glanced at any of these sheets.

The perusal of Croisilles' letter prompted her to read the bulletin she
had been holding in her hand; the first word that caught her eye was no
ot