ope of ever saving any more; obliged to go and cultivate my
vineyard in that little country district of Montbars, a very narrow
field for a man who has lived in the midst of all the financial
aristocracy of Paris, and among those great banking operations by which
fortunes are made at a stroke. Instead of that, here I am established
afresh in a magnificent situation, my wardrobe renewed, and my savings,
which I spent a whole day in fingering over, intrusted to the kind
care of the governor, who has undertaken to invest them for me
advantageously. I think that is a manoeuvre which he is the very man
to execute successfully. And no need for the least anxiety. Every fear
vanishes before the word which is in vogue just now at all the councils
of administration, in all shareholders' meetings, on the Bourse, the
boulevards, and everywhere: "The Nabob is in the affair." That is to
say, gold is being poured out abundantly, the worst _combinazioni_ are
excellent.

He is so rich, that man!

Rich to a degree one cannot imagine. Has he not just lent fifteen
million francs as a simple loan passing from hand to hand, to the Bey
of Tunis? I repeat, fifteen millions. It was a trick he played on the
Hemerlingues, who wished to embroil him with that monarch and cut the
grass under his feet in those fine regions of the Orient where it grows
golden, high, and thick. It was an old Turk whom I know, Colonel Brahim,
one of our directors at the Territorial, who arranged the affair.
Naturally, the Bey, who happened to be, it appears, short of
pocket-money, was very much touched by the alacrity of the Nabob to
oblige him, and he has just sent him through Brahim a letter of thanks
in which he announces that upon the occasion of his next visit to
Vichy, he will stay a couple of days with him at that fine Chateau de
Saint-Romans, which the former Bey, the brother of this one, honoured
with a visit once before. You may fancy, what an honour! To receive a
reigning prince as a guest! The Hemerlingues are in a rage. They who had
manoeuvred so carefully--the son at Tunis, the father in Paris--to get
the Nabob into disfavour. And then it is true that fifteen millions is
a big sum. And do not say, "Passajon is telling us some fine tales." The
person who acquainted me with the story has held in his hands the paper
sent by the Bey in an envelope of green silk stamped with the royal
seal. If he did not read it, it was because this paper was written in
Arabi