d living and
everything easy about him; she supplied him with the choicest wines, a
table worthy of a bishop, served by the best cook in the department but
without the pretensions of luxury; for she kept her household strictly
to the conditions of the burgher life of Arcis. It was a proverb in
Arcis that you must dine with Madame Beauvisage and spend your evening
with Madame Marion.

The renewed influence in the arrondissement of Arcis which the
Restoration gave to the house of Cinq-Cygne had naturally drawn closer
the ties that bound together the various families affected by the
criminal trial relating to the abduction of Gondreville. [See "An
Historical Mystery."] The Marions, Grevins, and Giguets were all the
more united because the triumph of their political opinions, called
"constitutional," now required the utmost harmony.

As a matter of policy Severine encouraged her husband to continue
his trade in hosiery, which any other man but himself would have long
renounced; and she sent him to Paris, and about the country, on business
connected with it. Up to the year 1830 Phileas, who was thus enabled
to exercise his bump of "acquisitiveness," earned every year a sum
equivalent to his expenses. The interest on the property of Monsieur
and Madame Beauvisage, being capitalized for the last fifteen years
by Grevin's intelligent care, became, by 1830, a round sum of half a
million francs. That sum was, in fact, Cecile's _dot_, which the old
notary then invested in the Three-per-cents at fifty, producing a safe
income of thirty thousand a year.

After 1830 Beauvisage sold his business in hosiery to Jean Violette,
one of his agents (grandson of one of the chief witnesses for the
prosecution in the Simeuse trial), the proceeds of which amounted to
three hundred thousand francs. Monsieur and Madame Beauvisage had also
in prospect their double inheritance from old Grevin on one side, and
the old farmer's wife Beauvisage on the other. Great provincial fortunes
are usually the product of time multiplied by economy. Thirty years of
old age make capital.

In giving to Cecile-Renee a _dot_ of fifty thousand francs a year,
her parents still reserved for themselves the two inheritances, thirty
thousand a year on the Grand Livre, and their house in Arcis.

If the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne were only dead, Cecile might assuredly
marry the young marquis; but the health of that great lady, who was
still vigorous and almost beautiful at