me?" asked the poet.

"Loves you? yes, more than she loves the duke," answered the dwarf,
rousing himself from a stupor which was admirably played. "She loves
you for your disinterestedness. She told me she was ready to make the
greatest sacrifices for your sake; to give up dress and spend as little
as possible on herself, and devote her life to showing you that in
marrying her you hadn't done so" (hiccough) "bad a thing for yourself.
She's as right as a trivet,--yes, and well informed. She knows
everything, that girl."

"And she has three hundred thousand francs?"

"There may be quite as much as that," cried the dwarf, enthusiastically.
"Papa Mignon,--mignon by name, mignon by nature, and that's why I
respect him,--well, he would rob himself of everything to marry his
daughter. Your Restoration" (hiccough) "has taught him how to live on
half-pay; he'd be quite content to live with Dumay on next to nothing,
if he could rake and scrape enough together to give the little one three
hundred thousand francs. But don't let's forget that Dumay is going to
leave all his money to Modeste. Dumay, you know, is a Breton, and
that fact clinches the matter; he won't go back from his word, and
his fortune is equal to the colonel's. But I don't approve of Monsieur
Mignon's taking back that villa, and, as they often ask my advice, I
told them so. 'You sink too much in it,' I said; 'if Vilquin does not
buy it back there's two hundred thousand francs which won't bring you a
penny; it only leaves you a hundred thousand to get along with, and it
isn't enough.' The colonel and Dumay are consulting about it now. But
nevertheless, between you and me, Modeste is sure to be rich. I hear
talk on the quays against it; but that's all nonsense; people are
jealous. Why, there's no such 'dot' in Havre," cried Butscha, beginning
to count on his fingers. "Two to three hundred thousand in ready money,"
bending back the thumb of his left hand with the forefinger of his
right, "that's one item; the reversion of the villa Mignon, that's
another; 'tertio,' Dumay's property!" doubling down his middle finger.
"Ha! little Modeste may count upon her six hundred thousand francs
as soon as the two old soldiers have got their marching orders for
eternity."

This coarse and candid statement, intermingled with a variety of
liqueurs, sobered Canalis as much as it appeared to befuddle Butscha.
To the latter, a young provincial, such a fortune must of course seem